Find conferences to speak at: what gamescom 2026 shows speakers

To find conferences to speak at where your clients are in the audience, you can look beyond your own industry, as the results of gamescom 2026 show. According to GamesWirtschaft on 30 August 2026, the fair in Cologne counted 368,000 visitors, 1,743 exhibitors and more than 36,000 trade visitors, and the preceding developer conference gamescom dev had 6,200 registered attendees according to ComputerBase. The call for speakers for this conference ran until 5 April 2026 according to a report by gamebiz, exactly 20 weeks before its start on 23 August 2026. For speakers this means that even an industry you are not at home in can have a professional programme with its own application deadline, and that you need this deadline in your calendar half a year before the date.

gamescom 2026: what the final results of 30 August 2026 list

gamescom is a trade fair for computer and video games, and its results appeared in several media on 30 and 31 August 2026. According to GamesWirtschaft and ComputerBase the figures come from the organisers Koelnmesse and game, and the three reports agree on every value quoted.

According to PocketGamer.biz on 1 September 2026, 72 per cent of the exhibitors came from abroad, and the exhibition space was fully booked for the first time. The fair narrowly missed the visitor record of 373,000 from 2019. According to ComputerBase about half of the trade visitors came from abroad, with the strongest growth from Brazil and Canada as well as the Netherlands and the USA. Felix Falk, managing director of the association game, said according to GamesWirtschaft that interest among exhibitors and visitors from more than 100 countries had never been greater.

To find conferences to speak at, identify the events with your clients in the audience

For speakers, finding conferences means choosing, from the many events on offer, those where your own clients sit in the audience and which invite talks from specialists. The usual route starts in your own industry, with the professional conferences for marketing or IT. How to go about it is described in our article How to find the right conferences for your topic, and an overview of the stages in the German-speaking region is given in Professional conferences in Germany.

gamescom shows an extension of this route. On its grounds 1,743 companies meet trade visitors, and in our view these companies face questions in fields such as finance, HR, law, IT security or AI that have only an indirect connection to games. Whether a conference admits such topics is decided, in our view, by the wording of its call, and that is exactly where gamescom dev is worth a look.

gamescom dev: how an industry fair issues its call for speakers

A call for speakers is an organiser’s public invitation to submit talks, panels or workshops for the programme. For gamescom dev, gamebiz reported the opening on 5 February 2026, and submissions of talks, panels and workshops were possible until 5 April 2026. According to gamebiz the focus was on sharing knowledge and real practical experience from game development; first-time speakers and experienced speakers were equally welcome, and AI-generated submissions and purely promotional or product-related talks were excluded.

The gamescom dev website cites around 220 sessions by 390 speakers and describes the target group broadly: developer teams from indie studios to AAA titles, publishers and service providers, press, trade organisations as well as schools and students. For 2026 the call is marked as closed there, and for future events the page refers to the Head of Program. The conference was called devcom until autumn 2025 and was then renamed gamescom dev, so anyone searching under the old name will find outdated information.

The call has two consequences for speakers from other industries. The programme asks for practical experience from game development, so an expert in payments or recruiting has slim chances without a case from that field. And the deadline fell 20 weeks before the start, so anyone who only starts looking for conferences in summer has already missed the application phase for August.

Finding conferences starting from your clients

The calculation for the lead time is short: between the deadline on 5 April 2026 and the start on 23 August 2026 lie 140 days, exactly 20 weeks. Suppose gamescom dev 2027 follows the same rhythm (the organiser has not announced this), then with a start on 23 August 2027 the deadline would again fall 20 weeks earlier, on 5 April 2027. If you want to be there in 2027, plan your research for the spring and watch the page from the start of the year.

For the search itself a calculation with open assumptions helps. Suppose you ask your ten best clients for the three events they attended last year. You then receive up to 30 mentions. If an event is named by at least three clients, it goes on your list, because at least three in ten of your best clients sit in its audience. This way you find events that appear in no industry overview under your field.

1. Ask your clients: Ask for the three most important events of the past year and note who names which.
2. Look for the professional programme: Check for every fair whether it has its own professional conference, as gamescom dev sits within gamescom.
3. Read the call: Note the deadline, formats, exclusions and the practical experience required, and check whether you have a case from that field.
4. Set up a calendar: Enter the deadline and set a reminder four weeks earlier for your submission.
5. Get in touch: If the call is closed, ask the person responsible for the programme about the procedure for the next edition, as the gamescom dev page suggests.

Deadlines of different conferences through the year are shown in the article Call for papers deadlines: when most conferences collect talk proposals. If you do not want to do the research yourself, Outsource conference research lists the tasks an agency takes over.