Event: Central & Eastern European Game Awards 2026
Gala: October 23, 2026
Location: Poznań, Poland
Held During: Game Industry Conference (GIC)
Organiser: Creative Industries Institute (IPK)
Categories: 8
Countries: 16
Top Nominee: REPLACED — 6 nominations
🏆 The CEEGA 2026 nominees are in. Games from 16 Central and Eastern European countries are competing across 8 categories, with winners announced at a gala in Poznań on October 23. REPLACED leads with six nominations — matching the awards’ all-time record.
⚖️ REPLACED Is Nominated in Every Category It Can Be
Sad Cat Studios’ REPLACED picked up six nominations, tying the historic record in CEEGA’s history. Look at where they landed and the scale of that becomes clearer.
It’s nominated for Best Game, Visual Art, Audio, Design, Narrative and Technology — which is every single category it’s eligible for. The only two it missed are Hidden Gem and Best Mobile Game, and it doesn’t qualify for either.
That’s a clean sweep of the nomination slate, and it puts a comparatively small studio directly up against some of the region’s biggest names.
The best of Central & Eastern Europe
More than 1,000 studios and close to 30,000 developers — a large, creative and, as CEEGA itself puts it, often underestimated part of the global games industry.
The nominees for the Central & Eastern European Game Awards (CEEGA) 2026 have been announced. Productions from 16 countries are competing across 8 categories, with the winners revealed at a gala on October 23 in Poznań during the Game Industry Conference.
This year the event forms part of Polish Video Games Days, organised by the Creative Industries Institute. Among the Best Game nominees are two high-profile Polish releases — Cronos: The New Dawn from Bloober Team and Dying Light: The Beast from Techland.
1,000+Studios in CEE
30,000Developers
16Partner Orgs
8Categories
2018Established
The Full List of Nominees
🏆 Best Game
- Cronos: The New Dawn — Bloober Team
- Dying Light: The Beast — Techland
- Mafia: Old Country — Hangar 13
- REPLACED — Sad Cat Studios
🎨 Visual Art
- Mafia: Old Country — Hangar 13
- MOUSE: P.I. For Hire — Fumi Games
- REPLACED — Sad Cat Studios
- Rue Valley — Emotion Spark Studio
🎧 Audio
- Cronos: The New Dawn — Bloober Team
- METAL EDEN — Reikon Games
- REPLACED — Sad Cat Studios
- Rue Valley — Emotion Spark Studio
🎯 Design
- ALL WILL FALL — All Parts Connected
- REPLACED — Sad Cat Studios
- Starminer — CoolAndGoodGames
- StarRupture — Creepy Jar
📖 Narrative
- Cronos: The New Dawn — Bloober Team
- Mafia: Old Country — Hangar 13
- REPLACED — Sad Cat Studios
- Rue Valley — Emotion Spark Studio
⚙️ Technology
- Dying Light: The Beast — Techland
- Mafia: Old Country — Hangar 13
- REPLACED — Sad Cat Studios
- Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator (UFDS) — SIMTECH SOLUTIONS
💎 Hidden Gem
- Cat Isle — domkegames, pixelduckoo
- Loot Loop — BitBrew
- TROLEU — Andrground
📱 Best Mobile Game
- A Difficult Game About Letters — Giorgi Abelashvili, Elene Abelashvili, Giga Putkaradze
- Highway Heroes — Pixel Federation
- Off The Road 2 — DogByte Games
- Uanamon: Hero Ranking Survivor — Wowky Games
Who Else Is Competing
📊 The Rest of the Field
Behind REPLACED’s six, the nomination counts break down like this:
• Mafia: Old Country (Hangar 13) — four: Best Game, Visual Art, Narrative and Technology
• Cronos: The New Dawn (Bloober Team) — three: Best Game, Audio and Narrative
• Rue Valley (Emotion Spark Studio) — three: Visual Art, Audio and Narrative, and the only game with three nominations that isn’t up for Best Game
• Dying Light: The Beast (Techland) — two: Best Game and Technology
The Hidden Gem category is the odd one out with three nominees rather than four, and it’s where the smallest teams appear — including Cat Isle from domkegames and pixelduckoo, and TROLEU from Andrground.
One nominee stands out for not being a conventional game at all: Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator (UFDS) from SIMTECH SOLUTIONS, an FPV drone simulator, is up for Technology.
How CEEGA Works
⚖️ Two Jurors per Country — a Journalist and an Industry Professional
CEEGA was established in 2018 as a collaborative project between game industry organisations across the region, created to honour the best games produced and released by local studios each year.
The judging structure is unusually transparent. Partner organisations appoint the Jury, with two members from each country — one journalist and one industry professional. That Jury both creates the nominations and selects the eventual winners, and CEEGA says it plans to expand the category list further.
The scale behind it is worth stating plainly: the CEE region is home to more than 1,000 studios and close to 30,000 developers and specialists — which, as the organisers note, makes it a large and highly creative part of the global industry that tends to get overlooked.
When and Where
📅 October 23 · Poznań, Poland
The CEEGA gala takes place on October 23 in the Earth Hall of the Poznań International Fair, held alongside the Poznań Game Arena and the Game Industry Conference, as part of this year’s Polish Video Games Days.
Full details are available at ceega.eu.
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