Hello!
It’s high time for another game jam!
This year, we’ll have even more prizes for best games made with Defold - check out rewards and challenges by Defold Foundation and Wavedash in the page description! Soon, we’ll be reveling more surprises around the game jam. This is a spiritual successor of the community #MadeWithDefold Jam and will also have a little online conference, when we’ll have some talks, workshops and presentations - details soon to be announced! Register now! 
Defold Foundation is sponsoring Steam Gift Cards for the best games at Defold Game Jam 2026:
100 €
50 €
25 €
4th–10th place: 10 €
Our partner Wavedash is sponsoring the Wavedash Challenge with rewards at Defold Game Jam 2026 - publish a game on Wavedash and the best ones win Wavedash Credits :
100 €
50 €
25 €
4th–10th place: 10 €
Wavedash wallet (and credits) allows players to charge once and maintain a balance, useful to buy games, content unlocks, cosmetics, etc. Wallet enables smoother transactions, and fewer steps, towards monetization for devs and gameplay for players.
Challenge: The requirement is that participants deploy and publish their jam game on Wavedash beside itch.io submission. Read more on how do it on:
Games published on Wavedash will be eligible for prizes. The winners will be judged by the Wavedash founders and will be announced after the jam ends.
We’re happy to announce that CraftPix joined the jam as sponsors and they will provide 4 rewards for the best games - 1-year Ultimate Access CraftPix membership!
CraftPix is an online store and resource specializing in high-quality premium and free 2D game assets for game developers, indie studios, and hobbyists.
We’re happy to announce that Ovani Sound joined the jam as sponsors and they will provide rewards for top 5 games, a custom main theme song for the winner, and free samples and special discounts for all particpants!
OvaniSound.com is a provider of royalty-free music, sound effects, voice-over packs, and audio plugins built specifically for indie game developers, filmmakers, and creators.
The winners and the 4 runner-ups will receive:
Additionally, ALL participants will receive a link with:
We’re happy to announce that our partner Poki joined the jam sponsors and they will provide special rewards for 3 best games!
Poki is a platform with web games, #1 in over 100 countries with over 100 million monthly players, for which we have great extension and tight integration for Defold.
Top 3 games will receive fast-track publishing review for Poki
Additionally, these top 3 games - after being published on Poki will receive: €1,000 upfront payment
The €1,000 is a release fee, meaning Poki will pay it upon the game’s full release on the platform and then recoup it from the developer’s revenue share. This ensures that developers who put in the work to release their game on Poki know they will earn at least €1,000 for their efforts. After that, they can earn significantly more through revenue share if the game performs well on Poki.
Additionally, every game that reaches full release receives a temporary featured spot on the Poki homepage.
It’s high time to vote for the theme of the game jam! Pick up to 3 best options:
We’re very happy to announce the first talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference! 
Erik Dubbelboer, Principal Engineer at Poki, will join us to share insights from the world of web games, Poki, and what it takes to build games that work well there!
Poki has been a great partner for Defold developers, and this should be a very useful session for anyone interested in web games, and publishing opportunities. Erik has a vast technical knowledge and it might be especially cool to ask some questions during the live Q&A session!
Mark your calendars! 
Saturday
2026-09-19T16:00:00Z→2026-09-19T17:00:00Z
Link to Google Meet:
And we have now 100+ participants! 
We’re happy to announce the next talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference!
Kyler Blue, CEO at Wavedash, will present to us what the vision of Wavedash is, how web games can shape future gaming, how you can be part of it, and what is needed to be successful on Wavedash!
Wavedash is a new web games platform that is growing very fast, founded and lead by Kyler - the guy behind Tenor GIF keyboard, so knows perfectly how to deliver convenience to users and wants to make Wavedash allow us to have console-quality games just a click away. There will be also an opportunity to ask questions about Wavedash in a live Q&A session after the talk.
Save the date! 
Firday
2026-09-18T15:00:00Z→2026-09-18T16:00:00Z
Link to Google Meet:
We’re happy to announce the third talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference!
Nitish Borthakur, Revenue Accelerator Manager, Apps and Gaming at Google, will join us with a session titled:
Monetizing on mobile: what changes when your web game becomes an app
This talk will look at what developers should consider when making a game for mobile - from the monetization case for porting, to ad formats, mediation, rewarded video design, retention-sensitive ad placement, consent, policy, invalid traffic risks, and how to design games so a mobile port remains cost-effective later.
The session will be store-neutral and focus on practical guidance for developers exploring mobile monetization.
There will also be time for Q&A!
Save it in your calendars!
Friday
2026-09-18T16:00:00Z→2026-09-18T17:00:00Z
Link to Google Meet:
We’re happy to announce another talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference!
Samuil Goranov @Sam from Balkan Ram Games will join us with a presentation about:
SpriteLoop: 2D animation workflow for Defold
SpriteLoop is a free and actively developed 2D cut-out animation tool for games, and it has a dedicated Defold runtime extension that lets you play SpriteLoop animations directly in Defold projects.
If you’ve ever wanted to get to know this tool to animate stuff from reusable parts and bring them into Defold with editor integration and Lua control, this is one to join - there will be also live Q&A session after the presentation.
Mark the date!
2026-09-19T15:00:00Z→2026-09-19T16:00:00Z
Link to the meeting:
We’re happy to announce another sponsor for Defold Game Jam 2026!
Kenney is joining the jam and sponsoring rewards for the best games!
Kenney.nl is a website with ones of the most popular resources for game developers, offering thousands of high-quality 2D, 3D, UI, and audio assets completely free to use in your projects.
Thanks to Kenney, the top 4 games in the jam will each receive:
Kenney Game Assets All-in-1 ($19.95 worth)
Asset Forge Deluxe ($39.95 worth)
We’re happy to announce another talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference!
@Halfstar will join us with a technical presentation:
Intro to Post-Processing: Day and Night Cycle Shader
This session will look at post-processing in Defold, so if you’ve ever wanted to understand how it can be used creatively in a game, this one should be very useful!
It will be:
2026-09-18T17:00:00Z→2026-09-18T18:00:00Z
Google Meet link:
We’re happy to announce another talk for the Defold Game Jam 2026 Online Conference!
Andy Tran, Head of Developer Relations at Heroic Labs, will join us with a presentation:
A practical introduction to Heroic Labs’ game tech stack
Heroic Labs is the team behind tools and services such as Nakama, Hiro, Satori, and Heroic Cloud, covering multiplayer, social systems, metagame features, LiveOps, and scalable backend infrastructure for games.
Andy will introduce to us what this stack can offer, when it can be useful, and how it can fit into your games!
It will be the first talk on Friday, 2026-09-18T14:00:00Z→2026-09-18T15:00:00Z
Google Meet link:
We’re also very happy that Heroic Labs joins the Defold Game Jam as sponsor for the Heroic Labs Multiplayer Challenge!
To participate in the challenge and be eligible for the reward, you are obliged to incorporate Heroic Labs Nakama in your game. You can read the guide here, check Defold Nakama example here and get Nakama for Defold here. Nakama Defold SDK and server is open-source and Apache 2.0 licensed, so you can use and self-host it for free.
If you were ever thinking about making a multiplayer game - this is a great opportunity!
P.S. We will be also updating the example and the Nakama extension in the following days to make sure everything is working
We’re happy to announce also next Photon Fusion Multiplayer Challenge for Defold Game Jam 2026! 
Top 5 games with Fusion integrated will get Fusion Plus voucher, 100 Concurrent Users (CCU) for 1 year
Additionally, the 1st place gets: One hour online video call with a Photon expert, covering the multiplayer in your game or any other multiplayer topic you are interested in.
The 100 CCU stacks on top of your tier, so Free Tier = 100 CCU + 100 CCU bonus = 200 CCU. If you have e.g. 500 CCU tier - you will have 600 CCU.
Photon Fusion is a multiplayer networking solution, and the new Photon Fusion extension for Defold makes it possible to experiment with room-based matchmaking, state replication, late join support, physics prediction, RPCs, networked object spawning, replicated properties, and authority-based gameplay logic directly in Defold.
Games submitted to the jam and using Photon Fusion will be eligible for the Photon Fusion Challenge - there is a great example game with Fusion integrated that we shared recently
Only 1 week left to start!
Prepare you templates, assets, basics of the game upfront!
Check out all the rewards and challenges descriptions to gather the most of the low hanging fruits!
Hi everyone,
I am teaming with a friend for this jam (and probably all next games 
), he will do all graphical assets.
I was wondering how can we join the jam as a team? I already joined with my itch account, but should we create another account for the team? Should/can he join with his account but both be declared as one team?
Thanks for your help!
So for teams, both participants should join the jam, but only one uploads the game. Then the one that uploaded, e.g. you - go to your game’s dashboard, click Edit Game, go to More, select Admins,
and enter your teammate(s)’ itch usernames or profile URLs:
Then your teammate(s) should accept the admin invite link.
Then you return to the Admins menu and check the box that says Display as Contributor.
Then both should be displayed and you can submit the game.
If something will not work, contact me directly
Good luck! 
