How to Win at Steam Next Fest: The Developer's Playbook

Why we wrote this

Steam Next Fest (SNF) is one of the most competitive moments in a game's life. Due to Steam's momentum-based algorithm, a game's total lifetime sales are highly correlated to its sale rate in the first 48 hours after launch. After collecting over 35 billion unique data points across 700+ games, we've found the single biggest factor that determines Day 1 sales is the number of engaged wishlists.

A large portion of these wishlists come from SNF, and the event has never been more competitive:

• 223% increase in competitors in the last 24 months (3,534 games)
• Top 1% of games captured 36% of all gains; bottom 50% only captured 3%
• 86% of participants enter with under 500 followers; their median gain is 11 followers (roughly 105 wishlists)
• <1.4% of games reach the Top Demos page

Thankfully, there are several concrete actions games can take to maximise their chances. We've collated them all, for free, in this playbook.

0. What is Steam Next Fest

Skip this section if you're already familiar with SNF. Steam Next Fest is a Steam event where players can browse and wishlist unreleased games, play demos, and watch developer livestreams. It runs for one week three times a year - in February, June, and October.

June 2026 key dates

Key rules

• The one-shot rule. Each game can participate in Steam Next Fest exactly once. If you enter, you have used your slot. The rule applies per game, not per developer.
• Demo eligibility.Your game must have a playable demo available during the event. Your game must be unreleased and listed as “Coming Soon” on Steam. For a full overview of publishing on Steam, see our growth guide.
• The opt-out safety valve. If you registered for June SNF but have not yet participated in any previous SNF, you can opt out before the event starts and preserve your eligibility for a later event.

October 2026 SNF

If you are considering withdrawing from June, October is the alternative. Registration deadline: August 31. Festival dates: October 19-26.

How to opt out

Return to the registration page via your App Landing Page in Steamworks and deselect the checkbox at the bottom. You can do this at any point before June 15. Opting out preserves your October eligibility if you have not yet participated in any SNF.

1. Most games are not ready

The reality is that most games who apply to SNF are not ready. We ran a predictive ranking analysis on 16,878 games across seven editions of the festival, and found that the two biggest predictors of success were:

• Total wishlists
• Recent wishlist growth rate

Pre-festival audience size explains 60% of the variancein SNF outcome (r = 0.773, r² = 0.60). No other factor in the dataset comes close. The audience you bring to the festival sets the floor and ceiling of what the algorithm can amplify.

Steam Next Fest is a multiplier on your current wishlist momentum, not a replacement. You need to start with a high wishlist count. If you go into SNF without a strong existing baseline, you won't get much out of it.

The importance of velocity

In our analysis, Phantom Blade Zero - which had 1.1 million wishlists going into its SNF cohort - ranked 61st overall, while smaller games that started with 15,000-40,000 wishlists made the top 10 because they had stronger momentum going in.

Momentum, measured as recent velocity, can temporarily outrank a larger accumulated total on the Trending and Top Demos charts because those charts weight recent activity, not cumulative count. Actions you take in the 14 days before the festival still change your algorithmic position.

2. How many wishlists can you expect?

Before planning, you need an honest benchmark. The figures below are drawn from Immutable's analysis of 16,878 games across seven SNF editions.

The headline numbers across 16,878 games:

• Median follower gain during SNF: 15 (roughly 144 estimated wishlists)
• 86% of all participants entered with fewer than 500 followers
• Only 2% of games gained 1,000 or more followers
• 4.6% of games gained zero followers or lost ground

The median of 15 is the realistic outcome for the majority of SNF participants. Most are early-stage games with small existing audiences. Understanding this distribution is the starting point for setting defensible internal expectations.

Outcomes by starting position

How to read this: Find your pre-festival follower count and read across. The P25-P75 column spans the interquartile range - half of all games at your starting position landed in that band. P90 is the top-decile result; one in ten games at your starting position did better than that.

The 0-500 bucket contains 86% of all participants. The P25 outcome there is 4 followers. If you are planning a 50-hour demo build and a 7-day content calendar expecting hundreds of new followers at this tier, the data does not support that expectation.

Read this table honestly. A studio entering with 600 wishlists has a median outcome of 322 new wishlists. The 70th percentile is 485 - meaning 70% of studios in that position earn fewer than 485. That is a real and useful data point that changes whether entering June or preparing for October is the higher expected value decision.

To convert follower figures to estimated wishlists: multiply by 9.6 (the industry heuristic for follower-to-wishlist ratio). A median gain of 760 followers (5K-10K starting tier) converts to approximately 7,300 estimated wishlists. This is a rough proxy - individual games vary significantly.

SNF is getting more crowded

Participant count grew 223% from February 2024 to February 2026. In two years, the number of games competing grew from 1,092 to 3,524, while the median increase in followers halved (24 to 11).

The most impactful pre-SNF activity is building your audience. Pre-festival size explains 60% of outcome variance. The single most actionable threshold: crossing 500 followers before the festival produces roughly a 10x improvement in median SNF outcome. There is no page-quality signal, marketing-spend signal, or demo-timing signal in the dataset that comes close to that.

3. Check whether you're ready

Before deciding how to spend your remaining 14 days, run this diagnostic against your current position. It takes five minutes and is the most important input to your preparation plan. You can withdraw from the festival at any time before the start date.

What each result means:

• All green: enrol in the next festival and execute the operating plan.
• Mostly yellow: enter the next festival, but treat it as a learning event. Your goal is to collect feedback, test your store page, identify creator fit, and build a stronger launch plan.
• Any red: genuinely consider withdrawing and entering a later SNF. Studios that enter with sub-500 wishlists and an unstable demo often finish with only a few hundred new wishlists and negative public feedback. That outcome follows the game.

4. How you gain wishlists

The main goal of SNF is to multiply your existing wishlists. Chronologically, wishlist gains come from four sources:

• Festival Trailer
• Press Preview
• Organic Discovery
• Top Demos

1. Festival Trailer

Ahead of the festival, Valve curates 20-30 games to feature in a promotional trailer shared across their channels. Think of this as “nice to have” free visibility rather than something crucial. As fewer than 1% of games make it in, don't build your strategy around it. That said, to improve your odds:

• Register for the festival early
• Have a high-quality trailer
• Ensure your trailer showcases the most unique or aesthetic elements of your gameplay

2. Press Preview

Press Preview is an 11-day window (June 4-15) during which Valve shares the list of participating SNF games with roughly 100 press outlets to play demos before the public festival opens.

This is Valve leveraging their press contacts to help games get additional coverage. There are no special ways to optimise beyond:

• Opt in to Press Preview (developers are opted in by default)
• Ensure your demo is playable
• Optimise your creative assets

Games must have their demo build and store page submitted for review by May 18 to be live at Press Preview start. The hard deadline for all required materials is June 3.

What to do now:

• Confirm your demo build is submitted and passing review
• Update your press contact details in your Steamworks SNF registration
• Prepare a short press kit: one-sheet, capsule, 5 screenshots, trailer link
• Send directly to press contacts covering your genre - do not wait for them to find you

3. Organic Discovery

During the festival, Steam shows your game on the Next Fest event page where it may be featured in various carousels. This is where most SNF wishlists come from for most games.

Once the festival goes live, the algorithm decides where to show your game:

During the first 48 hours: every game has a baseline chance of being shown on the main page. Certain carousels showcase games based on genre, customised to what the player viewing the page has enjoyed before.

After 48 hours: a machine learning algorithm starts increasing the visibility of games that performed well, and reducing it for games that did not. According to Valve, this works by promoting games that are being wishlisted to players who have similar taste to the people who originally wishlisted the game.

4. Top Demos

Steam publishes a Top Demos page to showcase the top 50 games with the most unique players during the festival.

Fewer than 1% of games make it onto this page; however unlike the Festival Trailer, the rankings show each game's capsule prominently on Steam with direct access to the store page. These games are typically considered the “winners” of SNF.

Practical takeaways

• Tag correctly.Your game will be shown to players based on the tags you've applied, as well as the 1-2 primary genres Valve requires you to select when submitting to SNF. Make sure these are accurate.
• Go in with wishlists.SNF is a multiplier on your existing wishlists. The more you go in with, the more you'll gain.
• Build momentum before the gates open. The algorithm rewards not just total wishlists, but large increases in wishlists before SNF and during the first 48 hours. Phantom Blade Zero, with 1.1M wishlists, ranked 61st. Games starting with 15K-40K made the top 10 because they had stronger momentum.

5. 14-day pre-festival checklist

You have 14 days before June 15. Not everything on this list is achievable. Prioritise in the order shown.

Priority 1: Creator outreach

This is the single highest-leverage activity in the 14 days before SNF. Creator coverage drives wishlist velocity on Days 1-2, which determines whether the algorithm amplifies your game on Day 3.

Timing: send keys as early as possible.

Who to target:

• YouTubers and streamers who cover your specific genre (not gaming broadly)
• Creators who specifically cover SNF demos each edition - they have established audiences for this format and are highly efficient
• Press: genre outlets, PCGamer, PCGamesN, Rock Paper Shotgun
• Newsletter writers covering indie games and SNF

Priority 2: Email your existing wishlisters

The “Email Wishlisters” button in Steamworks lets you notify everyone who has already wishlisted your game that your demo is live. This is free, reaches people who have already expressed intent, and should be sent at 10am PDT on June 15 when the festival opens. Draft the email now. Subject line matters - make it specific.

Priority 3: Tags audit and Developer Preview check

Your tags determine which SNF subcategory sections your game appears in. Check Developer Preview (available before SNF opens) to see exactly where your game has been placed. If the placement is wrong, fix your tags before June 15. This takes 10 minutes and directly affects who sees your game during the festival.

Priority 4: Store page - trailer first 15 seconds and capsule

For a full guide on how to optimise your Steam store page, see our dedicated guide.

• Capsule art: communicates your genre and visual identity at thumbnail size. Test this: blur your capsule to 50% opacity and ask someone unfamiliar with your game what genre it is. If they cannot tell, it is not working.
• Trailer:show gameplay in the first 5 seconds. No studio logos. No title cards. The question players are asking in the first 5 seconds is “what do I actually do in this game?” - answer it immediately.

Priority 5: Wishlist velocity push

If your daily velocity is under 10 wishlists per day, a targeted effort to increase it in the two weeks before SNF is worth the investment:

• Paid social targeting your genre audience
• Reddit posts in genre player communities (not r/gamedev - find where players hang out)
• Discord servers for games adjacent to yours
• A short devlog or update on existing community channels

Priority 6: Demo end-screen wishlist CTA

After a player finishes your demo, the final screen should include: a warm thank-you, an explicit wishlist button with a direct Steam link, an invitation to join your Discord or mailing list, and an optional feedback prompt. Players who have just finished and enjoyed the demo are maximally motivated to take action. Many studios leave this screen generic or absent.

Priority 7: War room setup

Before June 15, confirm:

• Someone is available daily June 15-22 to monitor, respond, and hotfix
• You have a categorised bug list (critical / major / minor)
• You can push a demo build update in under 4 hours
• Your Steam announcement post is drafted and ready to send at festival open
• Your daily tracking dashboard is set up

6. During the festival

Days 1-2: The window that determines everything

The first 48 hours are the most important hours of the festival. Almost nothing you do during them changes the outcome - because the outcome was determined by your preparation. Your job during Days 1-2:

• Send the Steam wishlist email at 10am PDT on June 15
• Monitor your demo for crashes via Steam forums and Discord
• Patch any critical bugs immediately - demo updates can be pushed without re-review
• Post on social channels: “We're in Next Fest - play the demo now”
• Watch for creators streaming your game and engage with them in real time
• Respond to every Steam forum post

Day 3: The algorithm commits

By approximately Day 3, Steam's ML algorithm has collected enough engagement data to personalise aggressively. Games that gained 6 or more followers on Day 1 achieved a median total festival gain of 108 followers. Games that gained nothing on Day 1 achieved a median of 8.

The gap is not tactical - it is a readiness signal. A strong Day 1 happens to games that were prepared. A weak Day 1 is a signal that something in the preparation was thin.

There is very little you can do to change this trajectory on Day 3. Keep executing - post daily, engage creators, respond to community - but the direction is largely set.

Days 4-7: Amplify or adapt

If the algorithm is amplifying your game: keep marketing. Post daily updates, share player reactions, amplify every creator covering the game. Chart position compounds.

If the algorithm has suppressed your game: the Trending chart does refresh throughout the week. Some games not on charts on Day 1 have appeared by Day 5-6 after sustained community activity. Keep pushing. Consider adding new content or a new mode to encourage replayability - one studio did this during February 2025 SNF and saw sustained engagement while comparable games declined.

Daily cadence

• Morning: check Steamworks analytics. Record wishlist count, page visits, conversion rate, and demo starts. Pay particular attention on Day 2 - this is typically the peak gain day, when the first complete global day of play drives the highest follower and wishlist velocity. Note any traffic spikes - a sudden surge usually means a creator went live. Find it and amplify it.
• Afternoon: patch any bugs identified overnight. Post a community update. Engage with new creator coverage.
• Evening:review what worked. Draft tomorrow's post. Make one decision about whether any change is worth implementing overnight.

Conclusion

We hope you get as much out of this as possible. Obviously there are always factors outside your control - SNF is a competitive event and the algorithm does not guarantee outcomes. But the studios that perform well are not the ones that got lucky. They are the ones that understood what the algorithm rewards and prepared accordingly.

Build a great game, find repeatable channels that build your audience pre-launch, and do more of what works.

Data in this article is drawn from Immutable's analysis of Steam store page data across 16,878 games and seven Steam Next Fest editions (February 2024 - February 2026). Follower data sourced from Steam's public store pages. All figures represent store page followers unless otherwise noted; estimated wishlist equivalents use the 9.6x industry heuristic.