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The 10 Strongest GOTY Contenders of 2025: Who Won?

A retrospective look at The Game Awards’ six official 2025 GOTY nominees, plus four games recognized by BAFTA’s separate 2026 Best Game award.
Length4 min Posted Quest giverVGSources Team
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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won The Game Awards 2025 Game of the Year. Because the award has already been decided, this is a retrospective shortlist, not a record of pre-award odds: the six official nominees form its core, and four additional games nominated for BAFTA’s 2026 Best Game award complete the ten. The ordering below is editorial, not a ranking of documented likelihood.

How this retrospective top ten is built

The closest evidence for a game’s chances of winning The Game Awards’ GOTY was a place in that award’s official nominee field. Its six nominees are the first six entries below, with the winner identified. The remaining four are drawn from BAFTA’s separate 2026 Best Game nominees to provide a wider look at critically recognized 2025 contenders; BAFTA’s nominations are not additional Game Awards nominations.

No official source establishes a unique order of likelihood among the games that did not win. This list groups the evidence by award field rather than pretending to reconstruct odds, audience preference, sales, or review scores.

The six Game Awards 2025 GOTY nominees

  1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — winner

    The Game Awards named the RPG its 2025 Game of the Year. Its official announcement also lists wins for Best Game Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, Best Score and Music, Best Performance, Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best RPG. Those results make it the clear retrospective answer—not merely one of several contenders. The Game Awards’ nominee and result page and its winners announcement provide the official record.

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    #1 Best Overall
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    DOG MAN: Misson Impawsible - PlayStation 5
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  2. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

    Its nomination placed it in the official six-game field for the award. That makes it one of the strongest award-specific contenders in hindsight, though the nomination alone does not establish that it was a close runner-up.

  3. Donkey Kong Bananza

    The Nintendo title was also an official Game Awards GOTY nominee. Its presence is evidence of recognition by that award’s jury and voting process, not proof of comparative odds against the other nominees.

  4. Hades II

    Hades II earned a place in the six-game GOTY field. As with the other non-winning nominees, the available result confirms consideration at the top level but does not disclose a precise finish or probability of winning.

    Rank #2
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  5. Hollow Knight: Silksong

    Hollow Knight: Silksong was among The Game Awards’ official GOTY nominees. Its inclusion is the relevant evidence for this award-specific retrospective; it should not be turned into an unsupported claim about sales, player sentiment, or runner-up status.

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  6. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

    The final official nominee in this core group was Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. The nomination gives it a stronger direct connection to The Game Awards GOTY than titles included only through another award’s field.

Four additional contenders from BAFTA’s 2026 Best Game field

These games extend the list beyond the six Game Awards nominees. BAFTA’s 2026 awards recognized games released in 2025, but its Best Game category is a separate award system. A BAFTA nomination is not an extra vote in The Game Awards.

Rank #3
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RoboCop: Rogue City - Unfinished Business – PlayStation 5
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  • FIGHT YOUR WAY TO THE TOP FLOOR: Following RoboCop's decisive victory over Detroit's gangs, a new chapter unfolds in this standalone extension set after the events of RoboCop: Rogue City.
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  • PLAY AS ALEX MURPHY: Experience unique missions with familiar faces which reveal more of the storyline of Unfinished Business. Gameplay blends nervous action and investigation, where your choices can decide the fate of citizens.
  1. Arc Raiders

    Arc Raiders was nominated for BAFTA’s 2026 Best Game. That makes it a defensible addition to a broader retrospective shortlist, while leaving its standing in The Game Awards’ GOTY field unchanged: it was not one of the six nominees listed above.

  2. Blue Prince

    Blue Prince also earned a BAFTA Best Game nomination. Its inclusion signals recognition in that award’s field, not a documented likelihood of taking The Game Awards’ prize.

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  3. Dispatch

    Dispatch was another BAFTA 2026 Best Game nominee. It broadens the range of games represented in the retrospective without implying that BAFTA and The Game Awards shared a ballot or ranking.

  4. Ghost of Yōtei

    Ghost of Yōtei completes the four-game expansion from BAFTA’s Best Game nominees. It was not in the six-game Game Awards GOTY field used for the core list.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was also a BAFTA 2026 Best Game nominee and could reasonably replace any of the four expansion picks in a different editorial shortlist. BAFTA’s nomination does not establish a single required set of four additions.

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What the award fields can—and cannot—tell you

The Game Awards: the direct GOTY signal

The official 2025 GOTY field contained six games, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won. For a question specifically about The Game Awards, those nominations are the most direct evidence available here. They do not reveal the vote totals or an exact order among the other nominees.

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BAFTA: a separate recognition

BAFTA’s 2026 Best Game nominees provide another view of games recognized for 2025 releases. BAFTA says its members considered 255 eligible games released between 16 November 2024 and 14 November 2025. More than 1,700 games-industry members selected its longlist. Those figures describe BAFTA’s process, not a combined score with The Game Awards. See BAFTA’s longlist explanation and its 2026 Games Awards results.

Reader-voted awards: a different signal

PlayStation Blog reported nearly 1.5 million votes across 19 categories for its 2025 reader-voted awards. That figure belongs to Sony Interactive Entertainment’s reader awards, not The Game Awards or BAFTA, so it should not be treated as evidence of either jury’s GOTY result. Sony’s award recap identifies that voting context.

Who won GOTY in 2025?

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won The Game Awards 2025 Game of the Year. BAFTA separately named it the winner of its 2026 Best Game award, alongside a different nominee field that included Arc Raiders, Blue Prince, Dispatch, Ghost of Yōtei, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. These are independent outcomes, not interchangeable votes or a combined award.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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