XP26 programming
2026 sessions
8:30 am
9:15 am
9:30 am
11:00 am
12:00 pm
1:00 pm
1:30 pm
2:00 pm
3:00 pm
4:00 pm
Registration (All Day)
Indie Pitch Competition presented by Ubisoft
Building an OP Cashflow Strategy for your Studio to Thrive
Building the Creator Pipeline: How Smart Partnerships Are Scaling Influencer Marketing
Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality
Art Direction Is Marketing (You’re Just Calling It the Wrong Thing)
The Innovation Paradox
Closing Deals in 2026
Building a Community for Lifetime Game Projects
How We Rebuilt Our Studio Around AI (And Why You Should Too)
From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets
The New Timeline for Indie Success
Game Audio: The Future of Game Audio & Music
What Does Indie Success on Steam Look Like? A Data-Driven Review
Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development
Where Traditional Animation Meets Gaming
What We Got Wrong (And Right) About Game Marketing
Legal Hacks for the Non-Lawyer: Lessons from the Game Lawyer Trenches
8:30 am
9:15 am
10:30 am
11:30 am
12:30 pm
1:00 pm
1:30 pm
2:30 pm
Registration (All Day)
Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’
IP Teardown: Under the Hood of the Game Worlds We Love
Capacity Planning That Works Across Studios and Titles
Worldbuilding a Generated City
Designing Effective Communication During Game Development
Renaissance of Business in Health Care and the Video Game Sector
Start Up 101 – 20 Years Later
Great Game, Wrong Foundation: A Studio Audit for Indie Founders
When Your Voice Shakes: Building Safety in the Studio Trenches
D2C in 2026: How New Platform Policies Unlock Even Greater Opportunity for Web Stores
How To Achieve High Quality, Performant Lighting in URP and Unity 6
The State of Game Funding: Trends, Tactics, and Opportunities
Responding to Unprecedented Climate
Funding the Future of Canadian Game Development
Advancing AI Game Development with AMD Schola and GPUOpen
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.
8:30 am
9:15 am
9:30 am
11:00 am
1:30 pm
Registration (All Day)
Indie Pitch Competition presented by Ubisoft
Ask Games Lawyers Anything: This Normally Costs Money
Unpacking the OP Financial Strategy: Deep Dive & Open Q&A
8:30 am
9:15 am
11:00 am
1:30 pm
Registration (All Day)
Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’
Game Audio Round Table
The AI Adoption Gap: Bridging Strategy and Reality in Games Leadership
Epic Games Ecosystem & Transmedia Storytelling
The Epic Games Ecosystem tools open up a world of opportunity for cross-platform narrative storytelling (transmedia storytelling). In this session, we will explore how Unreal
Fireside Chat with Digital Extremes’ President Sheldon Carter
Join Sheldon Carter, COO of Digital Extremes, for an in-depth fireside chat on the operational realities of leading a growing game studio. He’ll share insights
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
Fuelling the Flywheel: How Creator Programs Drive Live Service Growth
In live service games, consistent growth depends on a virtuous cycle of content, engagement, and monetization. This panel explores how revenue-sharing creator programs accelerate that
Funding Glitch Solved: A Game Finance Q&A
Unlock the capital you need to fuel your game development. In an open forum, join MNP and National Bank to discuss smart and effective strategies
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
Gaining the Edge: Building an OP Financial Strategy for your Studio to Thrive
Many studio heads understand tax credits are important, but few realize their true potential as a strategic leverage tool capable of fundamentally reshaping their studio's
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
Game Funding
This panel brings together a diverse group of industry experts to explore the many paths to funding your game or studio. From venture capital and
Get Rich at a Reasonable Pace
An insightful collection of proven methods and actionable insights designed to help developers navigate the complex game development landscape, reduce risk, and significantly improve their
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 Innovation Can Reduce the Cost of Your Production
Take the time with us to explore how innovation can streamline production and reduce costs. Through presentations from three forward-thinking studios, we’ll dive into real-world
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 to Design and Build Killer Game UI
In most game studios, designers create the UI and then hand it off to developers to make it functional. That handoff is often messy, time-consuming,
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
Improving your in-Editor workflows with Unity Muse
Unity's AI solutions provide a breadth of generative AI capabilities to build, animate, and troubleshoot errors with ease, all directly within the Unity Editor. In
Indie Asylum: A Case Study for Extreme Collaboration Between Indies
Both Montreal and Quebec are internationally recognized as capitals of the video game development industry. In the last two decades, this industry generated important cultural
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 Indie (Self) Publishing
What do indie publishers think about, what do the big platforms they work with think about, and what does that mean for people who make
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,
Introduction to Vtubers and Value Proposition for Companies
The VTuber industry has experienced significant growth in recent years. In 2023, the global VTuber market was valued at approximately $1.35 billion and is projected
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