Steam Next Fest opens Oct 19. Our game launches 24 hours later

TL;DR: Steam Next Fest October 2026 runs from October 19 at 10 AM PDT to October 26 at 10 AM PDT. My game O'BLOCK launches free on Steam on October 20 at 10 AM PDT (1 PM EDT), exactly 24 hours into it. Valve's rules say a game that releases before or during the fest is ineligible, and a game only ever gets one Next Fest, so O'BLOCK will spend the biggest discovery week of the season outside the room. It goes in with 20 wishlists. The one lesson: Next Fest is a pre-launch event, so if you want it, your release date has to sit after the fest ends, not inside it.

This is the short guide to how Next Fest actually works, straight from Valve's own Steamworks pages, plus the honest numbers from a launch that lands in the middle of it. Every rule below links to the page it came from, read on October 18, 2026.

The rule that keeps a launch out of Next Fest

Next Fest is Valve's weeklong festival of playable demos for games that are not out yet. It runs three times a year, in February, June and October, according to the Steamworks Next Fest page.

The October 2026 edition page lists five things a game needs. A Steamworks account in good standing. A public store page. Not a prologue or "chapter 1" of something already on Steam. A public demo by the time the fest starts. And the one that matters here: the game must be released any time after the fest concludes on October 26, 2026.

Valve spells out what happens if you break that last one. The FAQ on the main Next Fest page says it plainly:

"If you release your game prior to or during Steam Next Fest, your game will become ineligible and will not be included in the event at that point."

Two more lines make it permanent. Titles "may only participate in ONE Next Fest", and only unreleased games are eligible at all. Free games and Early Access are allowed, Valve says, but the game "must not yet be released". So once O'BLOCK goes live on October 20, it can never join any Next Fest. Not this one, not February 2027, not ever. Lowkey brutal, but clear.

What the games inside the fest get

It is worth knowing what is on the other side of that door, because it explains why devs plan whole years around it. From the same Steamworks pages:

• A fair shot at the front of the line. "The first few days of Next Fest are completely randomized in all locations except for explicitly named lists and personalized segments." After a few days, logged-in players see carousels personalized by what similar players are trying.
• No pay to win. Asked whether there are paid advertising options for Next Fest or Steam in general, Valve's answer is one word: "No."
• A demo email to your wishlisters. You can press the demo notification button once, within 14 days of your demo's launch, according to the Steamworks wishlist docs.
• A second shot after it ends. On October 26 Steam launches a wrap-up page featuring the games with the most played demos of the fest.
• A list for press. Press Preview started October 8 at 10 AM PDT, so outlets have had the full list of registered games for 11 days.

That randomized opening is the part I find most interesting. For the first few days, a tiny studio's demo can sit in the same slot as a big publisher's. That is a rare thing on any store, and it is the whole reason the "do Next Fest" advice is everywhere.

Festival wishlists are cheaper than they look

Here is the twist. The thing Next Fest produces is wishlists, and wishlists have been losing value.

On October 13, Chris Zukowski of How To Market A Game published sales data from 160 Steam games (34 launched in 2020-22, 126 in 2023-25). In the first month after launch, a 2023-25 game sold a median of 0.22 copies per launch wishlist. A 2020-22 game sold 0.45. Roughly half.

His theories for why: Valve made wishlisting easier (you can star a game from a hover tooltip without opening its page, so a wishlist is closer to a bookmark), festivals exploded after 2020, and "we have suspected for a while that festival wishlists don't convert as well." He is just as clear on the other half: wishlists still predict sales about as well as before (R² of 0.77 vs 0.72, which he calls within the noise). Inven Global's write-up has the same numbers.

My read, and it is only a read: a festival built to collect wishlists is a festival built to delay buying. A player in Next Fest week is in "try now, decide later" mode. That is exactly what you want for an unreleased game. For a game that is already out, it might be the worst mood to catch people in. Or it might be the best one, if the thing they can play right now is the full game for free. Nobody knows yet, and I am about to find out with a sample size of one.

Our side: 20 wishlists and a free game

O'BLOCK is a sneaker-flipping game: you haggle from a $300 shoebox up to a billion. It is free, it has no demo, and the launch announcement on Steam says it comes out October 20 at 1 PM EDT (10 AM PDT). The store page still says "Coming soon" as I write this.

The last Steamworks read we have is from 1:27 AM ET on October 13: 20 wishlists, 0 deletions, from 1,099 store visits and 10,259 store impressions in the week before. That is 1.8% of visitors. No newer read exists, so I will not guess one.

What 20 wishlists buys at launch, per Valve's wishlist docs: "any user that has the game on their wishlist at that time will receive an e-mail and/or mobile push notification". Only players with a verified email get it, some opt out, and anyone emailed about the same game in the last 2 weeks is on cooldown. So call it at most 20 launch emails. With a free game there is no price to bounce off, which is the one place I think we might beat the 0.22 median. That is a hunch, not a stat.

Is landing inside Next Fest a mistake? Honestly, for a game that could never be in it, I think the bigger risk is the noise, not the rules. Steam's front page will be pointing at demos all week. Some of those players will wander. A free, finished game is one click away from a demo hunter's queue. My bet is it is a wash. Ask me on October 27.

If you have a game that is not out yet

The useful part, all from Valve's pages:

• Pick your one fest on purpose. You get exactly one, ever. Valve says some devs join early in development for feedback and others pick "the one closest to launch in order to drum up interest". Both are allowed.
• Put the release date after the fest ends. October 26, 10 AM PDT this time. Releasing during it removes you from it.
• The next one is February 2027. The October 2026 registration deadline was August 31, and demos had to be in review by September 28, so for this week, that ship has sailed.
• Pick your 2 categories and fix your tags. The fest sorts games by the categories you choose at registration (up to 2) and then by store tags. No category means no spot in "By Genre" or "By Feature".
• Put the demo button on your store page and tick "display above purchase options", per the Next Fest tips.
• Do not run a Playtest during the fest. Valve recommends against it because it splits players between two builds.
• Leave the demo up after. Valve says many players are disappointed when demos vanish the moment the fest ends.

More from the lab on games: what Jonathan Blow's week-one sales say about launching into a crowded Steam, Epic vs Steam on launcher speed, and drawing 639,000 units in Bevy for the engine side.

The numbers so far

• Next Fest window: Oct 19 10 AM PDT to Oct 26 10 AM PDT (Steamworks, read Oct 18)
• O'BLOCK launch: Oct 20, 10 AM PDT / 1 PM EDT, free (Steam announcement)
• Gap: 24 hours into the fest, 6 days before it ends
• Wishlists: 20, 0 deleted (Steamworks, last read Oct 13 1:27 AM ET)
• Store visits, week to Oct 13: 1,099 from 10,259 impressions
• Industry median, 2023-25: 0.22 copies per launch wishlist in month one (Zukowski, 160 games)
• Next Fests O'BLOCK can ever join: 0

What happens next

Next Fest opens Monday at 1 PM ET. O'BLOCK goes live Tuesday at 1 PM ET, with the $4.99 Supporter Pack on the same day. I will post the real launch-week numbers after the fest closes: players, Supporter Pack sales, and whether those 20 wishlists turned into anything.

The question for you: if your game had to launch during a Next Fest week, would you move the date, or ride the traffic? And if you have launched inside one, what did it do to your first week?

If you want to back a one-person studio launching into the loudest week on Steam, the O'BLOCK Complete Supporter Pack is $4.99 on Steam: the soundtrack and all 192 city songs, stems, 4K art and wallpapers. No gameplay advantage, it just keeps the lights on. It goes on sale with the game on October 20; until then the page lets you wishlist it.