Steam Next Fest Complete Guide [2026]

Steam Next Fest is a week-long event where players try demos of upcoming games, and it's the single biggest marketing opportunity most indie devs will ever get for free. Over 2,000 games participate in each edition. Millions of players browse the sale page. The top-performing demos walk away with tens of thousands of new wishlists. The bottom performers get almost nothing.

TL;DR: Next Fest rewards preparation, not luck. Release your demo weeks before the fest, do content creator outreach a week ahead, and nail your tags and capsule art. 68-88% of wishlists come from people who never play the demo. Your store page is doing the work.

Key Takeaways

• You can only participate in ONE Next Fest per game. Most experienced devs pick the last one before launch.
• Games entering with under 1,000 wishlists rarely break into top tiers. Build momentum before the fest.
• 68-88% of wishlists come from players who never touch your demo. Store page optimization is everything.
• Content creator outreach should happen about 1 week before the fest starts.
• Tags determine which category pages you appear on. Check the Developer Preview and adjust before the fest.

The difference between those outcomes isn't luck. It's preparation. This isn't a speedrun. You need to grind before the festival starts.

This guide covers everything you need to do before, during, and after Steam Next Fest, built from data on thousands of participating games and real case studies from devs who crushed it (and devs who didn't).

Table of Contents

• What Steam Next Fest Actually Is
• 2026 Next Fest Dates and Registration Deadlines
• The 8-Week Countdown Timeline
• Demo Preparation
• Store Page Optimization for Next Fest
• Content Creator and Press Outreach
• The Livestream Component
• Day-by-Day Strategy During the Fest
• Common Mistakes That Kill Your Next Fest
• After Next Fest: Converting Momentum
• Benchmarks: What Good Looks Like

What Steam Next Fest Actually Is

Three times a year (February, June, October), Valve runs a week-long festival dedicated entirely to unreleased games with playable demos. Steam takes over its homepage with curated sections, genre categories, "Most Wishlisted" charts, "Top Demos" leaderboards, and "Trending Upcoming" lists.

Players show up in force. They browse, they wishlist, and some of them actually play demos.

Here's the part that breaks brains: most players who wishlist your game during Next Fest will never touch your demo. Data from Chris Zukowski's survey of the February 2025 Next Fest (208 games, about 9% of all participants) shows that 68-88% of wishlists come from people who never played the demo. They saw it on the sale page, liked the capsule art, read the description, and hit the blue wishlist button. Developers who track their Next Fest analytics consistently report this pattern—the demo unlocks visibility, but the store page does the converting.

The demo still matters. It unlocks your visibility. Without a demo, you don't appear in Next Fest at all. But the thing doing the heavy lifting for most games is your store page, your capsule art, and your tags.

One critical rule: you can only participate in one Next Fest per game. Choose wisely. Most experienced devs pick the last Next Fest before launch.

2026 Dates and Deadlines

Steam runs three Next Fests per year. Here are the 2026 editions:

February 2026 Edition

• Event: February 23 to March 2
• Registration deadline: January 5
• Demo submitted for Press Preview: January 26
• All items submitted for review: February 9
• Press Preview starts: February 12
• Next Fest begins: February 23 at 10:00 AM PDT

June 2026 Edition

• Event: June 15 to June 22
• Registration typically closes 7-8 weeks before the event

October 2026 Edition

• Event: October 19 to October 26
• Registration typically closes 7-8 weeks before the event

Check Valve's Upcoming Events page for the exact deadlines on future editions. They shift slightly each time. For a deep dive on choosing the right edition for your game, see our Next Fest scheduling and registration guide.

The registration deadline is not the date to start thinking about Next Fest. It's the date by which you should already have your marketing materials polished. Valve uses your store page, trailer, and tags to decide whether to include you in the official Next Fest trailer and other promotional materials.

Free Tool: Next Fest Readiness Score — Score your Next Fest readiness before you register. Runs in your browser, no signup required.

The 8-Week Countdown Timeline

Print this. Tape it to your wall. Or save it somewhere you'll actually look at it.

Week 8: Registration and Audit

• Register for Next Fest through your base game's App Landing Page in Steamworks
• Select your 1-2 primary genre categories carefully (these determine where you appear in the fest)
• Audit your store page: capsule art, screenshots, description, tags
• Check the Developer Preview page (available ~5 weeks before) to see where your game will be categorized
• If you don't have a demo yet, you're behind. Start building now.

Week 7: Demo Polish

• Your demo should be 95% done. Not "feature complete but buggy." Actually polished.
• Test on minimum spec hardware. Next Fest players will run your demo on potatoes.
• Add crash reporting and basic analytics. You want to know where players drop off.
• Add a feedback link on the main menu and/or pause menu. Steam forums, Discord, Google Form, whatever. Make it dead simple.
• Add a "wishlist" CTA at the end of the demo. After the player finishes, remind them.

Week 6: Store Page Final Polish

• Update all screenshots to reflect the demo content
• Make sure your trailer starts with gameplay in the first 5 seconds
• Review and update your tags. During Next Fest, tags determine which subcategories you appear in. This is more important than usual. Compare your tags against the Next Fest subcategories and adjust.
• Write a demo-specific announcement post for your Steam page
• If you're publishing a separate demo store page (recommended), set up those assets too

Week 5: Press Kit and Outreach Prep

• Your press kit needs to be live and current. Updated screenshots, demo-specific fact sheet, trailer link, key art.
• Build your content creator outreach list. Target 200-400 contacts (the Cairn team reached out to about 400). Specifically look for creators who cover Steam Next Fest demos. Some creators specialize in this.
• Draft your outreach email. Keep it short. One-paragraph hook, key details, trailer link, press kit link, demo key availability.
• Start generating demo keys through Steamworks

Week 4: Demo Build Submission (Press Preview)

• If you want your demo live for Press Preview (11 days before the fest), submit your demo build for review NOW. Build review takes time and you might fail the first submission.
• Give yourself buffer. Submit 3-5 business days before the actual deadline.
• Valve's build review checks that the game runs and has the features you promised. It's not QA. Bugs are your problem.
• Finish your social media announcement assets: #SteamNextFest graphics, GIFs, short clips

Week 3: Content Creator Outreach

• Send your outreach emails. The sweet spot is about 1 week before the fest starts. As Cairn's marketing manager put it: "Not too late as to be in the bulk of emails, and not too early to be forgotten."
• Include demo keys for creators who want early access (your demo needs to be publicly available for this)
• Post your demo announcement on your social channels
• If you haven't already, release your demo now. Don't wait until the morning of Next Fest.

Week 2: Final Preparations

• If you missed the Press Preview deadline, submit your demo build for review by this week at the latest. This is the hard deadline.
• Test your livestream setup if you plan to stream (more on this below)
• Prepare a daily social media schedule for the fest week
• Set up a dedicated channel or thread in your Discord for Next Fest feedback
• Create a Steam discussion sub-forum for demo feedback
• Use the "Email Wishlisters" button in Steamworks to notify existing wishlisters that your demo is live

Week 1: Go Time

• Double-check that your demo is live and working at least 30 minutes before the fest starts
• Play through your own demo one more time on a clean install
• Confirm your livestream setup works if applicable
• Prep your Day 1 social posts
• Get some sleep. You'll need it.

Demo Preparation

Your demo is the centerpiece of Next Fest. But it's also not what you think it is.

Scope and Length

Aim for 20-40 minutes of content. Long enough to hook players. Short enough that they don't feel "done" with your game.

The biggest trap is making a demo so good and so long that players feel satisfied. They played it. They got the experience. They don't need to buy the full game. End your demo on a cliffhanger. Cut it at the moment the player is thinking "wait, I want to see what happens next." That's when the wishlist impulse is strongest.

Some devs add new content or modes throughout the festival week to encourage replayability. Shotgun Cop Man did this during the February 2025 Next Fest and saw sustained engagement.

The Wishlist Funnel

After the player finishes your demo, show them a clear end screen that:

1. Thanks them for playing
2. Asks them to wishlist (with a clickable link or button)
3. Points them to where they can give feedback
4. Optionally asks them to join your Discord

Is This Seat Taken nailed this with a simple, warm end-screen during the Feb 2025 fest. It doesn't need to be aggressive. It needs to be present.

Technical Prep

• Test on low-end hardware. Players won't file a bug report. They'll just close the demo and move on.
• Add crash reporting. Even basic logging to a file helps.
• If your demo has online features, load test them. 10,000 people trying your demo simultaneously is a real scenario for popular games.
• Have a hotfix plan. You can push updates to your demo during Next Fest without re-review, but ship a game-breaking bug and you won't get those players back.

Separate Store Page or Same Page?

Since late 2024, Valve lets you publish your demo on a separate store page that can receive its own reviews, or keep the demo download button on your base game's page.

The data from Chris Zukowski's surveys shows no meaningful difference in wishlist performance between the two options. Roughly 50/50 split in adoption, roughly the same median wishlists earned.

But the separate page lets players leave reviews on your demo. That's invaluable feedback before your real launch. If the reviews go badly, you can pull the separate page and the reviews disappear.

Our recommendation: separate page. Get the feedback. Don't be afraid of honest reactions.

Store Page Optimization for Next Fest

During Next Fest, your store page works harder than at any other point in your game's life. Thousands of players will see your capsule art in browsing carousels. Many of them will decide in under two seconds whether to click.

Tags Are Everything

This is the single most actionable thing in this entire guide.

Steam Next Fest is organized by genre categories and subcategories. Your game's position in those categories is determined by the genres you selected during registration AND your store tags. If your tags are wrong or incomplete, you'll appear in the wrong sections, or worse, not appear at all.

Before the fest starts, pull up the Developer Preview page. See which sections your game appears in. If you're not showing up where you should be, adjust your tags. You can compare your tags against games that are correctly placed in your target category.

Chris Zukowski noted during the February 2025 fest that his personal recommendations were heavily weighted by his recent play history. If you're a farming game and you're not tagged as one, you're invisible to the players most likely to care about you.

Capsule Art

Your small capsule (462x174 pixels) is the version most players will see during Next Fest browsing. It needs to communicate your game's genre and vibe instantly at thumbnail size. No review quotes, no award logos, no tiny text. Logo plus evocative artwork.

Screenshots and Trailer

Lead with gameplay. Your first screenshot and the first 5 seconds of your trailer should show your core gameplay loop. Not a title screen. Not a studio logo. Not a slow pan over some mountains.

During Next Fest, auto-play trailers are your 5-second pitch. If those seconds are a black screen with white text, you've lost.

Content Creator and Press Outreach

This is where preparation separates the top performers from the pack.

Chris Zukowski's data consistently shows a stark correlation: games that earned the most wishlists during Next Fest did significantly more marketing beforehand. When he asked developers about their promotional activities, top earners wrote paragraphs describing their outreach campaigns. Bottom earners wrote "no promotion" or "posted on Twitter."

Build Your List Early

Start 4-6 weeks before the fest. You want 200-400 contacts across:

• YouTubers and streamers who cover your genre
• Content creators who specifically cover Steam Next Fest demos (they exist, and they're goldmines)
• Press outlets: PCGamer, PCGamesN, IGN, Rock Paper Shotgun, and genre-specific outlets
• Newsletter writers: Game Discover Co, genre-specific newsletters

Cairn's team specifically targeted creators who had covered Next Fest demos in previous years. Smart targeting beats mass emailing every time.

Send Your Emails at the Right Time

About 1 week before Next Fest starts. This is the window where creators are actively planning their Next Fest coverage but haven't locked in their schedules yet.

Include: a one-paragraph hook, your trailer link, a link to your press kit (you have one, right? presskit.gg makes this trivial), and an offer to provide demo keys.

The "Double Jump" Strategy

Xalavier Nelson Jr. used this technique with I Am Your Beast during the June 2024 Next Fest. His team timed the game's announcement to coincide with the PC Gamer Show, which aired 24 hours before Next Fest started. The announcement earned 15,000 wishlists in the first 24 hours. That velocity launched them onto the "Trending" chart on Day 1 of Next Fest, earning another 16,000 wishlists on the first day. Total: 60,000+ wishlists in one week.

This requires having a showcase feature or major press beat timed to land right before Next Fest. It's high-risk, high-reward, and requires a game good enough for a showcase to feature for free. But if you can pull it off, the compounding effect is enormous.

The Livestream Component

As of the October 2024 edition, Valve shifted developer livestreams to a separate tab within Next Fest. The official Valve-produced livestream is gone. Developer streams are now optional and self-managed.

If you don't have the experience or bandwidth to run a stream, skip it. Focus your energy on the demo itself and your outreach. A bad stream hurts more than no stream.

If you do stream:

Setup: Use OBS or another tool that supports RTMP. Stream directly to your game's store page via Steamworks (this requires specific configuration, especially if you're streaming a demo rather than your base game). Test it multiple times before the fest.

What to stream: Play your own demo with developer commentary. Do Q&A sessions. Show behind-the-scenes development footage. Let community members play while you watch and react. The goal is interaction, not performance.

When to stream: Peak Steam traffic typically runs from late morning to early evening in US time zones (roughly 10 AM to 8 PM Pacific). European evenings overlap with US afternoons for maximum reach. Don't stream at 3 AM hoping to catch every timezone. Stream when the most people are actually browsing.

Chat: Turn on broadcast chat by default. Engage with it. Answer questions live. This is what makes a dev stream valuable compared to a standard Let's Play.

Day-by-Day Strategy During the Fest

Days 1-2: The Equal Playing Field

Since October 2024, Valve gives all participating games roughly equal visibility during the first two days. The sale page carousels are randomized (except for explicitly named lists like "Popular Upcoming," which are based on total wishlists).

This is your window. Every game gets a shot. What matters now is whether players click on your capsule art and whether they wishlist after landing on your page. In practice, developers who prepared their store pages thoroughly before the fest report that the equal-visibility window is when all their preparation pays off—there's no time to fix things once Day 1 starts.

Your Day 1 jobs:

• Monitor your demo for crashes and critical bugs. Hotfix immediately if needed.
• Be active on Steam forums responding to feedback
• Post on social media: "We're in Next Fest! Play our demo!"
• Watch for content creators streaming your game and engage with them

Day 3: The Algorithm Kicks In

After roughly 48 hours of data collection, Steam's recommendation algorithm starts personalizing results. Games that performed well in the first two days get significantly more visibility. Games that didn't get suppressed.

Chris Zukowski's data shows this clearly: Diamond-tier games (10,000+ wishlists earned) saw their daily impressions nearly triple from Day 1 to Day 3. Bronze-tier games saw theirs fall off a cliff.

There isn't much you can do about this on Day 3 itself. The algorithm is responding to player behavior from Days 1-2. This is why pre-fest marketing matters so much. Games that entered with momentum (existing wishlists, content creator coverage, social media buzz) had higher Day 1 numbers, which triggered the algorithm to boost them further.

Days 4-7: Riding the Wave (or Salvaging)

If you're on the charts, keep marketing. Post daily. Engage with every content creator covering your game. Share player reactions.

If you're not on the charts, don't panic. The "Trending Upcoming" list refreshed significantly throughout the week during recent Next Fests. Games that weren't on the chart Day 1 appeared by Day 6. Keep pushing.

Two developers of similar games (The King Is Watching and 9 Kings) found each other during the Feb 2025 Next Fest and announced a joint bundle. Both games climbed the charts. Find allies, not competitors.

Common Mistakes That Kill Your Next Fest

Launching Your Demo at Next Fest

This is the biggest mistake, and Chris Zukowski repeats it in every single Next Fest analysis he publishes. Your data confirms it.

Games that entered the February 2025 Next Fest with fewer than 1,000 wishlists earned a median of 462 wishlists during the week. Not a single one reached Diamond tier (10,000+). Games that entered with 10,000-99,999 wishlists earned a median of 6,360.

Next Fest is not where you build momentum. It's where you cash in on momentum you've already built.

Release your demo weeks or months before. Participate in smaller festivals (check howtomarketagame.com/festivals for a running list). Get feedback, fix bugs, polish. Use Next Fest as the grand finale of your demo marketing, not the opening act.

The one exception: if your game has obvious viral potential in a hot genre (friend slop, idle games, horror co-op), you might beat the odds like Desktop Defender did with 200 followers. But that team had shipped 9+ games before. They knew what they were doing. Don't use their exception to justify your lack of preparation.

Ignoring Pre-Fest Marketing

"We'll let Next Fest do the marketing for us."

No.

The survey data is brutal. When Chris Zukowski asked developers what promotion they did before the fest, top earners wrote detailed descriptions of their multi-channel campaigns. Bottom earners wrote "close to none."

Top performers launched demos early and sent keys to creators. They posted on genre-specific subreddits. They ran targeted ads. They updated their trailers. They emailed press. They participated in other festivals. They tried many things, documented what worked, and kept pushing.

You can't tweet yourself to success. Marketing is about reaching people with audiences and convincing them to show your game to those audiences.

Wrong Tags

If your tags don't match the Next Fest subcategories, you're invisible to the players browsing those sections. Check the Developer Preview. Adjust your tags. This is free and takes 10 minutes.

No Feedback Loop

Players will tell you what's wrong with your demo. They'll post in Steam forums, leave reviews on your separate demo page, and message you on Discord. If you're not reading that feedback and patching your demo during the fest, you're wasting the best playtesting opportunity you'll ever get.

Skipping Press Preview

Press Preview starts 11 days before the fest. Valve shares the list of participating games with select press outlets. If your demo is live by then, journalists can play it and start drafting coverage that goes live when the fest begins. If your demo isn't ready until the morning of Next Fest, you've missed this window entirely.

After Next Fest: Converting Momentum

Next Fest ends. Now what?

Analyze Your Results

Valve provides clear post-fest metrics:

• Total wishlists earned
• Demo downloads and unique players
• How many people played AND wishlisted vs. wishlisted without playing
• Impressions from the Next Fest sale page

Compare against the benchmarks in the next section. Be honest about where you landed.

If you earned fewer than 500 wishlists, something fundamental needs to change before launch. Your capsule art, your tags, your genre, your hook. A poor Next Fest performance is a data point, not a death sentence, but ignoring it is.

Keep or Kill the Demo?

There's no single right answer. Some devs keep the demo up permanently, treating it as an ongoing conversion tool. Others pull it after Next Fest to create scarcity before launch.

If your demo is solid and you're months from launch, keep it up. It continues earning wishlists passively and gives content creators something to play. If launch is weeks away and you're worried about players feeling "done," consider pulling it.

Whatever you decide, communicate it clearly. Add a note on your demo's menu screen about when (or if) the demo will be deactivated. Many players download demos during Next Fest but don't play them until weeks later.

Post-Fest Outreach

Send thank-you posts to your community. Share your results (if they're good). Highlight specific player feedback you're incorporating.

This is also a great time to update your press kit with Next Fest data: "50,000+ demo downloads during Steam Next Fest" is a legitimate credential that makes future press outreach more effective.

Plan Your Launch Timeline

Chris Zukowski's research on "the gap" between Next Fest and the next major Steam sale shows that launching immediately after Next Fest isn't the advantage most devs think it is. The gap period between the June Next Fest and Summer Sale saw 53 games per day releasing, including many high-profile titles competing for the same algorithm slots.

Your wishlists don't expire. The "momentum" argument is weaker than the data suggests. Launch when your game is ready, not when you think hype is peaking.

Benchmarks: What Good Looks Like

Data from Chris Zukowski's February 2025 survey of 208 games (out of 2,244 participants):

Wishlist Tiers

What You Can Expect Based on Pre-Fest Wishlists

The pattern is unmistakable: it takes wishlists to earn wishlists. Games entering with 100,000+ wishlists earned a median of 23,731 more. Games entering with under 1,000 earned a median of 462. The tier you enter with is almost always the tier you leave with. What consistently works is treating Next Fest as a multiplier on existing momentum rather than a momentum generator—developers who understand this plan their marketing accordingly.

Impressions by Tier

Note how close Silver and Bronze are compared to the jump from Gold to Diamond. The algorithm rewards winners aggressively. The rich get richer. The algorithm has never heard of balance patches.

Genres That Win

The top-performing games at recent Next Fests cluster around a few categories Chris Zukowski calls "crafty-buildy-strategy-simulation" games. Horror consistently overperforms. Co-op "friend slop" games (fun multiplayer games with simple mechanics and goofy aesthetics) were the breakout genre of 2025.

From the February 2025 Diamond tier: Horror (x2), Strategy (x2), Point-and-Click Adventure (x2, but both were sequels to established series), Management (x2), Farming, Walking Simulator, Autobattler, Vampire Survivors-like, Simulation, Puzzle.

Pixel art showed up frequently in the top charts, but only for strategy, management, and Vampire Survivors-like games. All RPGs and platformers in the top demos were 3D. Pixel art seems to work best for genres where depth of systems matters more than visual immersion.

The Checklist

Copy this. Use it. Check things off as you go.

8 Weeks Before:

• Register for Next Fest
• Select genre categories
• Audit store page (capsule art, screenshots, tags, description, trailer)

7 Weeks Before:

• Demo is 95% polished
• Crash reporting and analytics added
• Feedback link on demo main menu and pause menu
• Wishlist CTA at demo completion screen

6 Weeks Before:

• Screenshots updated for demo content
• Trailer starts with gameplay in first 5 seconds
• Tags reviewed against Next Fest subcategories
• Separate demo store page set up (if using that option)

5 Weeks Before:

• Press kit live and current (presskit.gg if you need one fast)
• Content creator outreach list built (200-400 contacts)
• Outreach email drafted
• Demo keys generated

4 Weeks Before:

• Demo build submitted for review (Press Preview deadline)
• Social media assets created (#SteamNextFest graphics)
• Developer Preview page checked for category placement

3 Weeks Before:

• Content creator outreach emails sent
• Demo released publicly (if not already)
• Demo announcement posted on social channels

2 Weeks Before:

• Demo build submitted for review (hard deadline if you missed week 4)
• Livestream setup tested (if streaming)
• Discord channel set up for Next Fest feedback
• Steam discussion sub-forum created for demo feedback
• "Email Wishlisters" button used to notify existing wishlisters

1 Week Before:

• Demo confirmed live and functional
• Full playthrough on clean install completed
• Day 1 social posts prepared
• Hotfix plan ready

During the Fest:

• Day 1: Monitor for crashes, respond to forums, post on social
• Day 2: Track wishlist numbers, engage with content creators
• Day 3: Check algorithm positioning, continue engagement
• Days 4-7: Post daily updates, share player reactions, patch bugs
• Entire week: Read every piece of player feedback

After the Fest:

• Download and analyze Valve's post-fest metrics
• Post thank-you announcement to community
• Update press kit with Next Fest results
• Incorporate player feedback into development roadmap
• Decide: keep demo live or pull it?
• Plan launch timeline based on data

Frequently Asked Questions

When should I participate in Next Fest relative to my launch?

Most experienced devs pick the last Next Fest before launch, typically 2-4 months out. This maximizes wishlist accumulation when purchase intent is highest.

What if I earn fewer than 500 wishlists during the fest?

Something fundamental needs to change before launch: your capsule art, tags, genre, or hook. A poor Next Fest performance is data, not a death sentence. Use it to diagnose and fix problems.

Should I keep my demo available after Next Fest?

If it's solid and you're months from launch, keeping it up continues earning wishlists passively. If launch is weeks away and you worry about players feeling "done," consider pulling it. Either way, communicate your decision clearly.

How much does pre-fest marketing actually matter?

The data is stark. Developers who did significant pre-fest marketing (creator outreach, social posts, festival participation) consistently earned more wishlists than those who did none. You can't tweet yourself to success, but you can't stay silent either.

Related Guides

Dive deeper into each aspect of steam next fest:

• Content creator outreach for Next Fest
• Building a game demo
• Analyzing your Next Fest results
• The press kit checklist for Next Fest
• Next Fest scheduling and registration

For a post-event breakdown of what actually worked, read Steam Next Fest 2026: What Actually Worked.

Steam Next Fest dates and deadlines are updated before each edition. This article was last verified against Valve's Steamworks documentation on February 2, 2026. Data benchmarks are from Chris Zukowski's surveys at howtomarketagame.com.