Toronto, ON, May 20, 2026. The XP Game Summit opens at the Hyatt Regency Toronto on Thursday morning for its fifth annual edition, bringing developers, publishers, investors, platform holders, and service providers into a single two-day room on King Street West. Last year’s edition drew more than 350 companies from 18 countries, according to organizers, and the 2026 show arrives at a moment when the Canadian games sector is openly rethinking how it builds.
That tension is baked into the programming. This year’s theme, “Building Sustainable Game Businesses,” runs through almost every session on the agenda. After two years of layoffs, studio closures, and project cancellations across the global industry, XP26 has the feel of an event written for the recovery rather than the boom.
What XP26 is
XP Game Summit is a B2B conference, not a consumer expo. It runs Thursday and Friday, May 21 and 22, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Toronto, 370 King Street West. The 2026 edition features more than 50 expert-led sessions, an exhibition floor, the XP Indie Showcase, the XP Indie Pitch presented by Ubisoft, an Audio Track presented by Interleave, and a Business Lounge presented by FastSpring that runs on the MeetToMatch platform for scheduled one-on-one meetings between attendees.
The event was originally scheduled for its traditional June window before being moved to accommodate FIFA World Cup matches in Toronto starting June 12. The shift had a useful side effect: it landed XP26 right next to two co-located gatherings, the Canadian Game Awards Gala on May 21 and Xsolla Connect Toronto on the same dates.
The Canadian Game Awards arrive next door
The Canadian Game Awards partnership, announced in January 2025, brings the Gala to Toronto in May for the first time. The accompanying Eh! Game Showcase is positioned as a public-facing experience where players can try Canadian-made games and meet the teams behind them.
“The global game industry comes to XP Game Summit to do business with Canada,” Jason Lepine, CEO of XP Gaming, said in announcing the partnership earlier this year. “Partnering with the Canadian Game Awards helps show the world the depth of our industry and gives everyone a chance to celebrate it together.”
The combined effect is a roughly week-long anchor for Canadian games in Toronto, with business in one ballroom and recognition in another.
The content lineup
Programming is where XP26 makes its case. Several sessions take the industry’s recent contraction head-on. “The Great Games Reset: From Bigger Is Better to Lean Teams, Smarter Tools, and Real Fun” tackles the rebound from years of ballooning AAA budgets. “Responding to Unprecedented Climate,” delivered by Trang Nguyen and Kaitlin Tremblay of Toronto-based Soft Rains, looks at how a small studio uses breadth of skills to absorb industry shocks.
Business and deal-making are heavily represented. “Closing Deals in 2026” unpacks current publishing and funding terms, who to pitch, and when. “D2C in 2026: How New Platform Policies Unlock Even Greater Opportunity for Web Stores” responds to the Epic v. Apple and Epic v. Google rulings that reshaped storefront economics in 2025. “From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets” draws on live-service work across titles including Monopoly GO! and Apex Legends Mobile.
Production and craft round out the schedule. Dennis Micka of Guerrilla speaks on “Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for Horizon Forbidden West.” Other sessions include “Capacity Planning That Works Across Studios and Titles,” “Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development,” “Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality,” “The AI Adoption Gap: Bridging Strategy and Reality in Games Leadership,” “Legal Hacks for the Non-Lawyer,” and “What Does Indie Success on Steam Look Like? A Data-Driven Review.”
For Ontario-grown talent, Anthea Foyer of the City of Toronto’s IDM Office is on the program, alongside a session called “Two Truths and a Lie: Ontario Video Games Edition.”
Who’s in the room
The speaker list maps the people who do business with Canadian studios. Publishing and platforms are represented by Darryl Long, Managing Director of Ubisoft Toronto; Chloé Giusti, ID@Xbox Regional Lead for the Americas and ANZ; Allan Adham, Head of Game Scouting at Team17; Matt Lee, Executive Producer at Gameloft Montréal; Ivona Novak, Development Director at Electronic Arts; Emil Vanjaka and Rafael Mayor-Mora from 2K Games; and Dennis Micka of Guerrilla.
Commerce, finance, and legal sit alongside them: John Nguyen, Regional Vice President Canada at Xsolla; Chip Thurston, Head of Gaming at FastSpring; Joe Yuan, Managing Director at Double Black Capital and 1AM Gaming; Shum Singh, Managing Director at Agnitio Capital; Pontus Mahler, Co-Founder of Agora Gaming Partners; Jason Della Rocca of Execution Labs; and Ryan Black, Partner and Global Lead for Video Games at DLA Piper Canada.
Canadian studio leaders on the program include Tanya Short and Alexandra Orlando of Kitfox Games, Andrew Carvalho of Laundry Bear Games, Trang Nguyen and Kaitlin Tremblay of Soft Rains, Scott Christian of Hilltop Studios, and Wolfgang Hamann of Koolhaus, which marks 20 years in business this year.
The sponsor signal
The sponsor stack is a useful read on who is investing in Canada’s games industry right now. The City of Toronto sits at the diamond tier. Platinum sponsors are AMD, Xsolla, and Interactive Ontario. Gold tier: FastSpring and Ubisoft Toronto. Silver tier includes Behaviour Interactive, the Canada Media Fund, Gameloft Montréal, Insert Coin, Pixel Audio, Prodigy Education, and Torn Banner Studios. Bronze brings in ACTRA Toronto, DLA Piper, the Epic Games Store, ESA Canada, the federal Trade Commissioner Service, Hyper Hippo, National Bank, Nordicity, and Toronto Film School, among others. Soft Rains is the show’s creative partner.
The bigger picture
Canada’s games industry, valued at roughly $5.1 billion in the most recent figures cited by XP Gaming, has long produced for international publishers across the AAA, mid-tier, and indie ranges. Toronto in particular anchors much of that activity, with Ubisoft Toronto, Behaviour, and a wide network of co-development, art production, and live-service shops based in the GTA. The XP26 programming, the sponsor mix, and the co-located Canadian Game Awards Gala together suggest organizers have read the room: less time spent talking up the industry, more time spent on the unglamorous work of making it sustainable.
XP Game Summit 2026 runs May 21 and 22 at the Hyatt Regency Toronto. Full programming, speaker bios, and ticketing are at xpgamesummit.com.
