Steam Next Fest starts today with a record 8,000+ demos

Valve's week-long demo festival opens tonight, and it's bigger than ever. Steam Next Fest brings free demos of unreleased games, developer livestreams and a chance to wishlist what you like before launch. This October edition comes with a record number of entries and an unusual debate about quality. Here's what you need to know.

It runs for one week from tonight

According to Valve's Steamworks schedule, the festival starts on Monday 19 October at 10:00 PT (17:00 UTC, 20:00 Kyiv time) and ends on Monday 26 October at 10:00 PT (17:00 UTC). Remember that Europe moves its clocks back on 25 October, so in Kyiv the festival closes at 19:00.

More than 8,000 games have signed up

PC Gamer counted 8,011 matches on the Next Fest press preview page, roughly double the June 2026 edition. For comparison, the June 2022 festival had just over 1,000 demos. Korean outlet Gamemeca saw the count climb to 8,204 by 3 p.m. on 19 October Korean time, against about 4,500 in June.

AI-assisted development is part of the story

Both outlets point to AI "vibe coding" as one reason for the jump, with tools that let people write and debug code without much programming experience. PC Gamer's editor is blunt: he expects most of the demos to have little merit, and he warns that Steam's discovery algorithm will hide the bulk of them anyway.

Some developers are keeping their demos back

The flip side is cloning. PC Gamer reports that Alliance Arts, the studio behind Drunken Goddess Reflux, has dropped its planned Steam demo. The studio worries that AI tools could be used to copy its presentation and gameplay before release, so it will run closed play sessions instead. Separately, the developer NoGlyph says another studio copied code from its game Needle In A Haystack and has filed a copyright notice with Valve.

How to find the demos worth your time

With so many entries, a little filtering helps:

• Start from your wishlist and the games you already follow, and check which of them have a demo.
• Browse by genre in the Next Fest hub rather than scrolling the front page.
• Check the developer: a store page with a studio history, real screenshots and an active discussion board is a good sign.
• Watch a livestream before you download a large demo.

If you play on a big screen, our gaming monitor guide and gaming headset guide can help you get more out of a long weekend of demos.

More indie news this week

The ID@Xbox Showcase, co-hosted by IGN, streams on Tuesday 20 October at 10:00 PT with 18 upcoming games, Warp Pipes reports. Separately, the bankrupt studio behind Samson is selling its rights, with bids due on 21 October.