It has been a very long time for the reason that U.S. held full sway over voting in The Sport Awards. In 2024 and 2025, American retailers took up simply 24 seats on a global jury of greater than 130. For the reason that awards started in 2014, there’s been a consistent trend of internationalization because the jury has expanded. Even so, the U.S. has persistently had by far the largest presence of any single nation on the jury — not less than 10 extra votes than another nation. However that period is over.
This week, in addition to confirming particulars such because the eligibility cutoff date (sure, as predicted, Grand Theft Auto 6 sneaks in just under the wire), The Sport Awards has revealed the composition of the 2026 jury. And the largest change is the dramatically lowered presence of U.S. media.
There at the moment are simply 17 American retailers on the jury, an enormous drop in comparison with earlier years. On the identical time, the U.Ok. — all the time the second-biggest energy in Sport Awards voting — has elevated its votes from 14 to 17, drawing stage with the U.S. for the primary time.
At first, this looks as if a symbolic shift, moderately than one that may have a significant impression on the nominations and winners on the awards. In spite of everything, the gaming cultures of the U.S. and U.Ok. are fairly comparable, give or take a FIFA or a Madden. However if you happen to zoom in on the modifications to the American voting physique, and zoom out to contemplate modifications elsewhere within the jury, it begins to look extra important.
The opposite story this yr is the emergence of a 3rd energy in Sport Awards voting: Brazil, which has elevated its footprint by 4 retailers and now instructions 14 votes, only a whisker behind the British and Individuals. That is a part of a unbroken surge in jury members from Latin American nations, which now make up round 21% of the jury.
In the meantime, the Anglophone voting bloc of the U.S., U.Ok., Canada, and Australia is on the wane; the affect of East and Southeast Asia has dropped barely (China has simply three votes); and mainland Europe has consolidated the massive improve in jury membership it made final yr, now carefully rivaling the English-language media by 27% to twenty-eight% of the jury, respectively.
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Why did the variety of American retailers on the jury drop so sharply? The story here’s a mass exodus of mainstream, life-style, and tech media. Leisure Weekly, Esquire, Inverse, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, Wirecutter, and Wired have all left the jury. It is a very pronounced pattern, though I could not inform you what’s behind it. Maybe it is a deliberate alternative by The Sport Awards; maybe, within the present tough media local weather, these publications have misplaced their gaming writers.
Final yr, I wrote about how an more and more internationally various jury didn’t necessarily mean a more diverse group of nominated games. Specifically, illustration for indie video games has shrunk throughout the classes, probably a side-effect of the actual fact smaller studios cannot typically afford to have their video games localized into many languages. Because the jury has grown, its style has shrunk, specializing in the sort of video games that may journey simply all around the world.
I stand by this argument, however I would like to notice one caveat. There’s a technique, tallying completely with the modifications within the jury, during which the video games represented at The Sport Awards are rather more various than they was: nation of origin.
On the Spike Video Sport Awards, TGA’s predecessor, the Sport of the 12 months winner was way more more likely to be an American recreation than not. Between 2014 and 2020, American video games received GOTY at The Sport Awards 4 occasions out of seven. However since then, there have been no American wins, with the GOTY award going to Sweden, Belgium, France, and Japan (twice). Shiny action-adventures have fallen away (when it comes to GOTY wins, if not nominations), with the worldwide jury seeming to desire RPGs and household video games like It Takes Two and Astro Bot.
Is the hegemony of the all-American AAA blockbuster within the GOTY race actually over? Properly, we’ll see. You possibly can’t get extra shiny than this yr’s overwhelming favourite, Grand Theft Auto 6. Rockstar Video games is headquartered in New York. The sport’s topic is America. A great proportion of the 1000’s of people that have labored on it are American, within the San Diego and Los Angeles studios. The lead improvement studio for Grand Theft Auto video games stays, as all the time, Rockstar North, in Edinburgh, Scotland — however at this level, possibly that is a technicality. Time for one final hurrah, then. However I await the primary Brazilian GOTY winner with curiosity.