Summer Game Fest is coming back.

Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest debuts in June with Day of the Devs

Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest, an industry-wide online celebration of video games, will return in June, and it will include Day of the Devs, an indie game festival.

The announcement comes a day after the Entertainment Software Association announced that the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) will also debut as a free online-only show in June.

After Keighley, the creator of The Game Awards, decided to leave E3, he started his own event and created his first Summer Game Fest in the summer of 2020 so that game companies could announce their games during the pandemic. This was successful, and Keighley should not be confused with GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb, who created his own Summer Game Mess.

Keighley’s Summer Game Fest event will be curated jointly with the Day of the Devs team, and the developer showcase will feature new video game content, including “world exclusive” news and gameplay, plus video game musical performances.

Day of the Devs, a platform that Double Fine Productions and iam8bit produce together, is now in its ninth year as an indie games showcase. Day of the Devs celebrates the creativity, diversity, and magic of the indie game community, taking on the form of virtual and physical events.

Developers interested in participating can submit their games for consideration starting today. Developers from diverse backgrounds working on interesting and unique games are welcome and encouraged to apply here. Submissions close April 9.

The roster of participating publishers and developers, along with an event schedule outline will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.