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The Steam Awards hit their 10th anniversary this year. To mark the 2026 edition, it has been announced that two new categories are being added.
The newcomers are This Is My Job Now and Hall of Fame of the Hall of Fame. Both have a bit of an edge to them, starting with the names.
The schedule is out too. Nominations are open from November 23 to 30 local time. Voting kicks off on December 17 to line up with the start of the Steam Winter Sale.
That means users get two chances to weigh in. If you have a game you want to champion, put November 23 in your calendar now.
What are the new Steam Awards 2026 categories?
Two are being added: This Is My Job Now and Hall of Fame of the Hall of Fame.
The first reads as a slot for games that players sink into like a second job. Farming, management, logistics, organizing things into tidy rows: games where the repetition itself is the fun have never had an award shape to fit into. This new category just built them a seat at the table.
The second is structured to put past winners back on the ballot together. It’s a category tied to the 10th anniversary milestone, and one that couldn’t exist without nine years of accumulated winners. Ten years in, that is a card only this award can play.
When can you nominate and vote?
Nominations run November 23 to 30 local time. Voting starts December 17, the same day the Steam Winter Sale begins.
| Phase | Dates (local time) | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Nominations | November 23–30 | Put the games you want to back into each category |
| Voting | From December 17 | Pick from the nominees |
The thing to watch is that the nomination window is only eight days wide. Voting overlaps with the Winter Sale, so it’s hard to miss, but nominations slip past people easily. If you want to get a favorite game onto the ballot at all, November is when you need to move.
Running the vote alongside the Winter Sale is a smart bit of design, too. The impulse to buy new games on sale and the impulse to vote for a game you’ve played all year end up happening on the same screen.
Who decides the Steam Awards?
Steam users handle both the nominations and the voting. There’s no jury and no selection committee.
That structure is the single biggest difference between this and every other game award. Critical consensus matters less than the sheer number of people who poured hours into something. Which is why every year the winners include games that don’t line up with critics’ year-end lists.
There’s an upside and a downside. The upside is that what players actually felt gets reflected. The downside is that titles with huge player counts have a built-in advantage. For a small indie game to climb the standings, it has to be an unusually perfect fit for a category’s personality.
On that note, the new This Is My Job Now category leaves real room for indies to do well. Games built around obsessive, repeatable loops are very much within reach of a small team.
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The bottom line: two new categories for year 10, nominations open November 23
The Steam Awards reach their 10th anniversary in 2026, and two new categories are joining the lineup: This Is My Job Now and Hall of Fame of the Hall of Fame.
Nominations are open from November 23 to 30 local time. Voting begins December 17, the start of the Steam Winter Sale. Steam users do both the nominating and the voting. If there’s a game you want to push, the eight days starting November 23 are the main event.
Of the two new categories, This Is My Job Now is the one that will actually matter. Games built on obsessive repetition rarely score well on critics’ year-end lists, yet they dominate when you look at total hours played. Steam Awards reaching out to capture that gap makes complete sense. The other one, Hall of Fame of the Hall of Fame, is a slot only a decade of history could unlock. The problem is that lining up past winners again tends to reproduce the old standings exactly as they were. It may not turn into a place where anyone discovers something new. Even so, it’s a fitting piece of design for a 10th anniversary. And because this is a user-voted award, the fact that the results diverge from the critics’ rankings isn’t a flaw. It’s the entire reason the thing exists.
The window is eight days from November 23. That’s when you get your pick onto the ballot.
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Nokko Oda
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