Gamescom Opening Night Live returns on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, and it opens what is shaping up to be the busiest week in gaming this year. Two hours of world premieres, Geoff Keighley on stage, and a Witcher 3 announcement nobody saw coming.
Here is when it starts where you are, how to watch it for nothing, and what is already locked in.
Gamescom Opening Night Live start time
The show runs roughly two hours from 8:00 p.m. CEST on August 25.
- 8:00 p.m. CEST (Cologne)
- 7:00 p.m. UK
- 2:00 p.m. ET / 11:00 a.m. PT
- 11:30 p.m. IST
- 4:00 a.m. AEST (August 26)
It streams free on YouTube, Twitch and Steam. No ticket, no subscription, no signup. Geoff Keighley hosts, joined this year by Eefje “sjokz” Depoortere.
What is already confirmed
Two games are locked in for the show itself, and one of them is a genuine surprise.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past. CD Projekt Red is bringing a brand new expansion to a game that came out in 2015. Eleven years on, with a sequel in development, the studio is going back to Geralt’s story. It will be playable at CD Projekt Red’s booth on the show floor as well as appearing during the broadcast. This is the headline, and it came out of nowhere.
Metro 2039. Publisher Plaion and developer 4A Games are presenting the next entry in the Metro series. The Metro games have quietly become one of the most consistent first-person series in the business, and 2039 is the first proper follow-up in years.
Beyond those, NCSoft is world-premiering a project currently known only as Project Bonfire, revealing its real title and design for the first time.
Who else is at Gamescom this year
Gamescom Opening Night Live is the broadcast, but the show floor runs August 26 to 30 at Koelnmesse in Cologne, and exhibitor demand this year has been record-breaking. In-person tickets are already sold out.
Confirmed exhibitors include SEGA, Xbox, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Krafton and HoYoverse, with Nintendo bringing a substantial Switch 2 presence. Publishers do not book floor space that size without something to show, so expect the ONL lineup to grow considerably between now and the 25th.
The elephant in the room: GTA 6
Worth addressing, because it is the first question anyone asks about a August gaming showcase.
Rockstar is not part of Opening Night Live, and does not need to be. The company announced its own beat two days later: Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look premieres August 27, on Netflix first and Rockstar’s channels six hours after.
So the week runs: Opening Night Live on Tuesday, Gamescom proper opening Wednesday, and Rockstar detonating its own announcement on Thursday, entirely on its own terms and outside anyone else’s show. That is very Rockstar, and it is going to make for a strange and very crowded few days.
What to realistically expect
Gamescom Opening Night Live has a consistent shape: a dozen or so trailers, two or three genuine surprises, a handful of release dates, and at least one announcement that leaks about an hour beforehand anyway.
The safe expectations are release dates for things already announced, a Switch 2 showing from Nintendo, and at least one revival nobody asked for. The Witcher 3 expansion already proves the show can still land a real shock, which is more than can be said for most publisher showcases now.
We will have a full breakdown of everything announced the morning after.
More gaming coverage: our GTA 6 hub tracks every confirmed detail ahead of the November 19 launch, and the rest lives in the gaming section.
What do you want to see announced? Put your predictions in the comments and we will check them against the show.
Sources: GamesWirtschaft, Notebookcheck, Inven Global. Lineup details are subject to change; we will update this post as more games are confirmed.
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