XP26 programming
2026 sessions
| Time | Red Stage (Regency A) | Green Stage (Regency B) | Blue Stage (Regency C) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8:30 am | Registration (All Day) | ||
| 9:15 am | Opening Remarks & Title
Founder & CEO, XP Gaming Inc.
| ||
| 9:30 am | Indie Pitch Competition presented by Ubisoft
Co-Founder, Execution Labs
Game Director, Ubisoft Toronto
ID@Xbox Regional Lead - Americas/ANZ, Microsoft - Xbox
Content & Acquisition Lead, Team17
Founder & CEO, Serenity Forge
| ||
| 11:00 am | Building an OP Cashflow Strategy for your Studio to Thrive
Co-founder, Insert Coin
Co-founder, Insert Coin
| Building the Creator Pipeline: How Smart Partnerships Are Scaling Influencer Marketing
Studio Director, Hilltop Studios
Regional Vice President - Canada, Xsolla
CEO, Corvian Marketing
Marketing Director / Influencer Manager, Mighty Yell / Skystone Games
| Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality
Executive Producer, Gameloft Montreal
|
| 12:00 pm | The Innovation Paradox
Founder and Chief Consultant, International Hobo Ltd
| Closing Deals in 2026
Co-Founder, Agora Gaming Partners
| |
| 1:00 pm | Building a Community for Lifetime Game Projects
Community Director, Kitfox Games
| How We Rebuilt Our Studio Around AI (And Why You Should Too)
CEO, Gaggle Studios
| |
| 1:30 pm | From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets
Lead Product Manager, Scopely Inc
| Building Our UA System From Media Buying to Scalable Growth Engine
VP, Marketing, HyperHippo
| |
| 2:00 pm | The New Timeline for Indie Success
Co-Founder, Execution Labs
| Game Audio: The Future of Game Audio & Music
Co-Founder, Managing Director, Interleave
Audio Director, Soft Rains
Audio Director, Ubisoft Toronto
Audio Director, Tencent
| The Business of UX
Founder, Go Boldly Design
|
| 3:00 pm | Inside the Booth: Bringing Professional Performances to Your Next Project
Studio Director, Hilltop Studios
Actor, ACTRA
Voice Actor
Voice/Casting Director
| Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development
Co-Founder and Technical Director, Laundry Bear Games
| |
| 4:00 pm | Where Traditional Animation Meets Gaming
Executive Director, 2veinte
Creative Director, 2veinte
| What We Got Wrong (And Right) About Game Marketing
Co-founder, Never A Minute Marketing
Partner, Wholesome Games
General Manager, Indie Asylum / Gambit Digital
Technical Director & Co-Founder, Adjective Noun Studios
| Legal Hacks for the Non-Lawyer: Lessons from the Game Lawyer Trenches
Partner; Co-Chair of Canadian Intellectual Property & Technology, DLA Piper Canada LLP
Partner; Global Lead, Video Games, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
Associate - Intellectual Property and Technology, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
|
| Time | Red Stage (Regency A) | Green Stage (Regency B) | Blue Stage (Regency C) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8:30 am | Registration (All Day) | ||
| 9:15 am | Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’
Principle Game Designer, Guerrilla Games
| ||
| 10:30 am | IP Teardown: Under the Hood of the Game Worlds We Love
Founder and Head of IP, Leverage
| Capacity Planning That Works Across Studios and Titles
Executive Producer, Gameloft Montreal
Senior Operations Manager, 2K
Director of Operations (Shared Development Studios), 2K Games
Production & Planning Director, Ubisoft Toronto
| Worldbuilding a Generated City
Captain, Kitfox Games
|
| 11:30 am | Designing Effective Communication During Game Development
Lead Game Designer, Behaviour Interactive
| Renaissance of Business in Health Care and the Video Game Sector
VP, Business Development and Partnerships, Surrey Place
Development Director, Electronic Arts
Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer, Lumenus Community Services
Sector Development Officer, IDM Office, City of Toronto
| Start Up 101 – 20 Years Later
Pres./CEO/Founder/Owner, Koolhaus Games Inc.
|
| 12:30 pm | Great Game, Wrong Foundation: A Studio Audit for Indie Founders
Fractional COO, OpsCat
| Canada’s Video Game Industry – From Strength to Staying Power
President & CEO, ESAC
CEO, Nordicity
Senior Manager, Digital Content, Entertainment Software Association of Canada
| |
| 1:00 pm | When Your Voice Shakes: Building Safety in the Studio Trenches
Director of Operations, Nightmarket Games
| D2C in 2026: How New Platform Policies Unlock Even Greater Opportunity for Web Stores
Head of Gaming, FastSpring
| |
| 1:30 pm | How To Achieve High Quality, Performant Lighting in URP and Unity 6
Sr. Software Development Consultant II, Unity Technologies
| The State of Game Funding: Trends, Tactics, and Opportunities
Strategic Advisor | Games, Partnerships, & Investments
Managing Director, Agnitio Capital
Co-Founder, Agora Gaming Partners
Co-Founder, Execution Labs
| Responding to Unprecedented Climate
Head of Operations, Soft Rains
Narrative Director, Soft Rains
|
| 2:30 pm | Funding the Future of Canadian Game Development
Director of Business Development and Partner Licensing, tinyBuild Games
Director of Marketing & Communications, XP Gaming Inc.
Co-Executive Director, Baby Ghosts Studio Development Fund
Deputy Director, CMF Program Administrator, Telefilm Canada
| Advancing AI Game Development with AMD Schola and GPUOpen
Staff Software Engineer, AMD
Sr. Developer Product Marketing Specialist, AMD
| |
2026 round tables
XP Curated Expert Roundtables are available to Conference and VIP pass holders. Limited capacity ensures focused discussion.
Advance registration through MeetToMatch is required and seats will fill quickly.
| Time | Studio B |
|---|---|
| 8:30 am | Registration (All Day) |
| 9:15 am | Opening Remarks & Title
Founder & CEO, XP Gaming Inc.
|
| 9:30 am | Indie Pitch Competition presented by Ubisoft
Co-Founder, Execution Labs
Game Director, Ubisoft Toronto
ID@Xbox Regional Lead - Americas/ANZ, Microsoft - Xbox
Content & Acquisition Lead, Team17
Founder & CEO, Serenity Forge
|
| 11:00 am | Ask Games Lawyers Anything: This Normally Costs Money
Partner; Co-Chair of Canadian Intellectual Property & Technology, DLA Piper Canada LLP
Partner; Global Lead, Video Games, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
Associate - Intellectual Property and Technology, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
|
| 1:30 pm | Unpacking the OP Financial Strategy: Deep Dive & Open Q&A
Co-founder, Insert Coin
Co-founder, Insert Coin
|
| Time | Studio B |
|---|---|
| 8:30 am | Registration (All Day) |
| 9:15 am | Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’
Principle Game Designer, Guerrilla Games
|
| 11:00 am | Game Audio Round Table
Co-Founder, Managing Director, Interleave
|
| 1:30 pm | The AI Adoption Gap: Bridging Strategy and Reality in Games Leadership
Strategic Growth & Developer Relations, Artificial Agency
|
Advancing AI Game Development with AMD Schola and GPUOpen
Explore how AI is transforming game development pipelines — accelerating your workflows and enabling smarter, more immersive gameplay. This session covers the latest developer tools
Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality
Most game projects fail quietly while “on track.” This talk reframes production around a single, unforgiving truth: a playable build tells you more than any
Art Direction Is Marketing (You’re Just Calling It the Wrong Thing)
Art direction is not visual polish—it’s conversion designCosmetics = identity = monetization = retentionDiversity isn’t moral fluff—it’s market expansion + player attachment Cosmetics work from
Ask Games Lawyers Anything: This Normally Costs Money
This roundtable session allows you to ask any burning legal questions* you may have from a group of games industry lawyers. DLA Piper’s games lawyers
Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development
Applying just a few best practices for code and design to a game during development, regardless of project budget, can make a huge difference in
Building a Community for Lifetime Game Projects
How do you build and maintain a community for games in indefinite development? Alexandra Orlando of Kitfox Games will give a peek behind the curtain
Building an OP Cashflow Strategy for your Studio to Thrive
Let’s discuss strategies that enable studios of any size to supercharge established financial tools to improve your returns. Early-stage indies can convert sweat equity into
Building Our UA System From Media Buying to Scalable Growth Engine
Most UA teams are still optimizing campaigns while believing they’re optimizing for growth. This talk challenges that assumption and introduces a different model: user acquisition
Building the Creator Pipeline: How Smart Partnerships Are Scaling Influencer Marketing
The creator economy is evolving fast — and the studios and publishers winning at influencer marketing aren’t doing it alone. This panel brings together industry
Canada’s Video Game Industry – From Strength to Staying Power
Economic impact, global competitiveness, and the policy foundation for growth.
Capacity Planning That Works Across Studios and Titles
Capacity forecasting across multiple studios and titles is one of the hardest operational problems in modern game development, and one of the least consistently solved.
Closing Deals in 2026
Learn how to pitch at the right stage, what deal terms to expect in 2026, and how to target the right partners. This session unpacks
D2C in 2026: How New Platform Policies Unlock Even Greater Opportunity for Web Stores
2025 was a year of unprecedented growth for D2C, with rulings like Epic v. Apple and Epic v. Google unlocking new growth vectors for web
Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’
When getting stuck on designing Cauldrons (Horizon’s dungeons) on ‘Horizon Forbidden West’, Dennis Micka’s entire approach to level design changed when he started designing the
Designing Effective Communication During Game Development
Whether it is two people or fifty, knowing how to communicate clearly, resolve conflicts, and align goals can make or break a game’s development. Come
From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets
I’ve worked across North America, Europe, and Asia on live-service games like Monopoly GO! and Apex Legends Mobile. From that experience, I’ve learned that successful
Funding the Future of Canadian Game Development
What does sustainable growth look like for game studios in Canada today? This panel brings together leaders from public funding, global publishing, and nonprofit developer
Game Audio Round Table
This will be an open forum for discussing topics important to the game audio and music community. Best practices and emerging trends in creative design,
Game Audio: The Future of Game Audio & Music
This session explores best practices and emerging trends by connecting strategy, team-building, and creative vision with the latest tech and tools defining the modern industry
Great Game, Wrong Foundation: A Studio Audit for Indie Founders
This session gives indie founders a practical framework for finding the cracks in their company’s foundation before a publisher, investor, or the market finds them
How To Achieve High Quality, Performant Lighting in URP and Unity 6
I take users through the process of lighting a complex scene in Unity URP and the performance ramifications of the choices available to them. Breaking
How We Rebuilt Our Studio Around AI (And Why You Should Too)
The traditional studio model of long planning cycles, rigid pipelines, and budgets demanding mass-market hits is no longer viable. AI has collapsed the cost of
Indie Pitch Competition presented by Ubisoft
Got a game with strong commercial potential? Pitch it live on stage in Toronto at XP Game Summit 2026. Five indie studios will be selected
Inside the Booth: Bringing Professional Performances to Your Next Project
Voice Acting in video games is more than performance, it’s a production process that hinges on direction, context, and iteration. In this live interactive session,
IP Teardown: Under the Hood of the Game Worlds We Love
The great game universes feel inevitable. But what’s actually going on beneath the surface? In this session, Christian Fonnesbech shares principles for thinking about game
featured sessions
- Building a Community for Lifetime Game Projects
- The Retention Layer: The Hard Truth About Community and Social
- From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets
- The Innovation Paradox
- Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development
- Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality
- Worldbuilding and Procedural Generation
- Responding to Unprecedented Climate