GitHub's Game Off 2026 game jam opens with SHIFT theme, entries due December 1

GitHub has opened Game Off 2026, the fourteenth edition of its annual month-long game jam, and the theme this year is a single word: SHIFT. According to the GitHub Blog, participants have until December 1, 2026 at 13:37 PST to build and submit a game inspired by the theme, and it is up to each entrant how literally or loosely they take it.

GitHub says thousands of developers have joined the jam over the years, producing work that ranges from finished platformers to deliberately strange experiments. Beginners are explicitly invited, and the blog notes that many entrants build their very first game during the event.

One word, many directions

The theme can be read as shifting gears, perspectives, dimensions or bits, or as working the night shift. Among the concept sketches the GitHub Blog offers are a racing game in which changing gear also rewrites the rules — one gear reverses gravity, another slows time — a puzzle-platformer set across two overlapping realities, a horror game worked during a late-night convenience store shift, a comedy about a detective who committed the crime and must pin it on someone else, and a programming puzzler where bitwise left and right shifts resize objects in the world.

The blog's practical advice is to begin with one core mechanic and one level that actually works before layering on anything grander. It also suggests using GitHub Copilot as a brainstorming partner, feeding it the theme plus a few constraints and asking for weekend-sized ideas a solo developer could handle.

How to enter

The submission process has two parts, and GitHub stresses that the second is easy to miss. Entrants need a free GitHub account, must join the jam through the Game Off 2026 page on itch.io (sign-in with a GitHub account is supported), and must keep the game's source code in a public GitHub repository. Pushing the code before the deadline is not enough on its own — the game must also be submitted on itch.io before December 1, 2026 at 13:37 PST to count as an entry.

Rules and judging

The rules are intentionally light. A game must live in a GitHub repository, and while templates and starter projects are welcome, most of the work should happen during the jam itself. Licensing is up to each entrant, with open source encouraged but not required. Solo developers and teams are both fine, and any engines, frameworks and assets — open source, commercial, commissioned or original — may be used.

AI-assisted development is permitted. GitHub acknowledges that AI use in game development is a sensitive subject and says submitters will be asked to describe how they used AI, so other participants can better understand how each game was made.

Winners are decided by the community. Once submissions close, entrants play and rate each other's games in six categories: Overall, Gameplay, Graphics, Audio, Innovation, and Theme interpretation. Voting runs until January 1, 2027 at 13:37 PST, with winners announced afterwards on the GitHub Blog and GitHub's social channels.

Engines, tools and community

Any programming language or engine qualifies. GitHub's suggestion list spans Godot, Unity, Unreal Engine, Phaser, Pygame, Bevy, LÖVE, Flame, Ebitengine, Defold, libGDX, HaxeFlixel, raylib, PICO-8 and TIC-80, covering everything from full 3D engines to browser-focused 2D frameworks and fantasy consoles. Past participants have also built games for old consoles, terminals, calculators and other unusual hardware. A Game Off 2026 community space and a community-run Discord server are available for finding teammates and sharing progress, and GitHub points newcomers to its Git and GitHub documentation.

Why it matters

Game Off is one of the few large recurring events that ties game creation directly to open collaboration on GitHub, and a fourteenth edition signals real staying power. Its approach to AI is worth noting: rather than banning AI-assisted entries, GitHub asks for disclosure at submission time, a middle path that other game jams are actively debating. The requirement that source code live in a public repository also nudges first-time game developers into version control habits that outlast the event. For anyone planning to enter, the practical points are fixed: a one-word theme, a December 1 deadline, and a two-step submission process where forgetting the itch.io step means no entry at all.