The Game Awards 2025: Every Winner Revealed — From Game Of The Year To Every Category
The Game Awards 2025 blasted through three high-octane hours of world premieres, show-stopping performances, and star cameos. Geoff Keighley returned to helm a night that crowned winners across 32 categories—from visuals and narrative to esports and community support—capped by the evening’s biggest jaw-dropper.
Quick version: The Game Awards 2025 ran three brisk hours at the Peacock Theater, Geoff Keighley did the Keighley thing, and Sandfall Interactive's debut RPG 'Clair Obscur: Expedition 33' basically bulldozed the ceremony. Nine wins. Game of the Year. The whole deal. And somehow the show still had room for a pile of trailers, a couple genuine curveballs, and at least one celebrity villain reveal I did not have on my bingo card.
Expedition 33 ran the table (and then some)
Sandfall's first swing turned into a near-sweep: nine trophies, including Game of the Year, direction, narrative, art, music, performance, RPG, indie, and debut indie. That combo is wild on its own, but it's even wilder considering how crowded those fields were this year.
There were a few outliers. 'Battlefield 6' snagged Best Audio Design, which was probably the night's only real upset over 'Expedition 33.' On the flip side, Embark's 'ARC Raiders' edged out 'Battlefield 6' for Best Multiplayer. And the long-running 'will it ever actually come out?' saga of 'Hollow Knight: Silksong' ended the best way possible: it finally launched this year and took Best Action/Adventure.
All the winners
- Game of the Year: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Best Game Direction: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Best Narrative: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Best Art Direction: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Best Score & Music: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Lorien Testard)
- Best Performance: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Jennifer English as Maelle)
- Best RPG: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Best Independent Game: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Best Debut Indie Game: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Best Action Game: Hades II
- Best Action/Adventure Game: Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Best Adaptation: The Last of Us Season 2
- Best Audio Design: Battlefield 6
- Best Community Support: Baldur's Gate 3
- Best Content Creator: MoistCr1TiKaL
- Best Esports Athlete: Chovy
- Best Esports Game: Counter-Strike 2
- Best Esports Team: Team Vitality (Counter-Strike 2)
- Best Family Game: Donkey Kong Bananza
- Best Fighting Game: Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
- Best Mobile Game: Umamusume: Pretty Derby
- Best Multiplayer Game: ARC Raiders
- Best Ongoing Game: No Man's Sky
- Best Sim/Strategy Game: Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
- Best Sports/Racing Game: Mario Kart World
- Best VR/AR Game: The Midnight Walk
- Games for Impact: South of Midnight
- Game Changer Award: Girls Make Games
- Innovation in Accessibility: Doom: The Dark Ages
- Most Anticipated Game: Grand Theft Auto 6
- Players' Voice: Wuthering Waves
Premieres, surprises, and the celebrity cameo parade
Even with 'Expedition 33' vacuuming up trophies, the announcement pace stayed high. Capcom finally brought real gameplay for 'Pragmata' and planted a flag: April 2026. 'Forest 3' and 'Saros' got gritty new looks, and Housemarque locked a launch date for its next chaotic action game.
'Marvel Rivals' made a clean hype play by confirming Deadpool for Season 6 in January. Then Casey Hudson showed up with 'Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic,' and 'Exodus' rolled out a glossy trailer featuring Matthew McConaughey, who is, as the trailer says:
'a pivotal character in the story'
Lenny Kravitz popped in to tease his villain turn in IO Interactive's '007: First Light' because apparently we're doing rockstar spies now.
Remedy delivered one of the night's best reveals: 'Control: Resonant,' shifting the spotlight to Dylan Faden and a twisted Manhattan. It looks like more of the studio's reality-bending weirdness, just bigger. Also in the mix: 'Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis,' 'Out of Worlds,' and the debut of Wildlight's 'Highguard.'
All told, the show packed in more than 15 premieres with almost zero downtime. Between the return of Megaman and a bunch of new IPs getting loud first looks, 2026 is already looking crowded.
The show itself
Keighley steered another tightly produced night, spreading 32 categories across everything from visuals and storytelling to esports and community support. Presenters handled most of the handoffs, and the show rarely lingered anywhere too long. It felt like a victory lap for 'Expedition 33' and a sizzle reel for what's next.
Your turn
If you weren't riding for 'Clair Obscur: Expedition 33' as GOTY, who would you have picked? And which smaller-category win made you do a double take?