PC Gamer’s Shaun Prescott reported 8,011 matches on Steam’s press-preview landing page for the October 2026 Next Fest. Steamworks schedules the event from 7 p.m. on October 19 through 7 p.m. on October 26, 2026, peninsular Spain time.
What the 8,011 figure counts
The number refers to matches on a press-preview page. Steam’s public event page describes Next Fest as a celebration of upcoming games with hundreds of free demos, developer broadcasts and chat. Prescott’s figure and Steam’s public description refer to different things.
How the festival works
A game needs a public store page, a public playable demo by the festival’s start, a Steamworks account in good standing and a planned release after the event to qualify. Each game can participate in one Next Fest only. Steamworks says there has been no official festival livestream since October 2024; developers may stream voluntarily in a separate tab.
Reported concerns about imitation
PC Gamer also reported at least seven Roblox clones of Escape the Walls on October 19. In a separate case, NoGlyph accused Little Field Studios’ A Game About Needle In A Haystack of copying code from Needle In A Haystack. NoGlyph said 13 class names and more than half of the functions in the relevant section matched, and said it filed a copyright notice with Valve. NoGlyph’s Steam post sets out the allegation.
