Fire Emblem Is Officially Nintendo’s Strongest GOTY 2026 Contender

Published Sep 20, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT Oli Welsh has been covering the business and culture of video games for two decades. He started out writing for Edge and other publications (specializing in MMOs and Blizzard, as cover for his World of Warcraft playtime) before joining Eurogamer, where he worked for 14 years as reviews editor, deputy editor, and editor-in-chief; Eurogamer won many Games Media Awards during his tenure. At Polygon, he writes about film and TV as well as games, and provides news, analysis, and criticism on the entertainment we love and the industries that make it, all from his home in London. He loves role-playing, racing, puzzles, tactics, exploration, storytelling, Nintendo, mysteries, spies, fantasy, reality, cars, and classic cinema. He wanted to be a movie critic when he grew up, and now he’s definitely grown up, and occasionally is one. He considers this a win. An underdog in any other year, in 2026, Fortune's Weave is one of the strongest contenders yet Fire Emblem just majorly shook up the 2026 GOTY race Image: Nintendo Sign in to your Polygon.com account I don't think I had "Fire Emblem gets a Game of the Year nomination at The Game Awards" on my bingo card for 2026 — or for any other year, for that matter. But I think it's a possibility. In fact, I think it's almost definitely going to happen. Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is a contender. That doesn't mean it's going to win. It increasingly looks like nothing will come even close to getting in Grand Theft Auto 6's way. But it does mean that, in a weak field, Nintendo and developer Intelligent Systems have muscled their way to the front of the pack through sheer force of conviction. Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is a top GOTY 2026 contender Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo Fire Emblem would once have been considered far too niche to attract Game of the Year attention from The Game Awards jury. It's an RPG, sure — one of the jurors' favored genres. But it's also a tactics RPG. It's basically a strategy game, and no strategy game has ever secured a GOTY nomination. Things started to change for Intelligent Systems' series in the 2010s, though. First, there was Fire Emblem Awakening for the 3DS, which is still widely considered the best entry in the series. It attracted enough critical acclaim to start to break through with players who weren't particular fans of the genre. Gaming's cognoscenti took notice. Then, in 2019, came Three Houses, the first Fire Emblem game on Switch. The appeal of Three Houses' Hogwarts-style premise and its soapy plot chimed perfectly with the moment, as both the Switch and the anime storytelling style were rocketing to new levels of popularity. That year, Three Houses won Best Strategy Game at The Game Awards. More tellingly, and more remarkably, it also won the fan-voted Players' Voice award, beating Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding. It was a statement of intent: Fire Emblem, and games like it, have a sizable constituency of fans who will show up for them. Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon At the same time, Japanese-developed RPGs that don't have the budget or the mass-market brand recognition of Final Fantasy have started making their presence felt in the GOTY race. Persona 5 was nominated in 2017, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in 2022, and Metaphor: ReFantazio in 2024. There's a clear path to a nomination for games like these if they have a strong enough critical reputation. That's just what happened. Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave has a Metacritic rating of 89, the same as the current pack-leader Resident Evil Requiem and Pokémon Pokopia. As a story-forward epic RPG — albeit a tactical one — it's much more aligned with the jury's conception of a Game of the Year than the life sim Pokopia, and Fire Emblem (rightly or wrongly) has more critical credibility than Pokémon. There are better-reviewed games out there, but they're either too esoteric (Mina the Hollower) or in genres the jury considers beneath GOTY (Forza Horizon 6, which suffers from the racing game curse). It may not look like your average GOTY contender, but Fortune's Weave is about as strong as they come this year. At this stage, I don't think there are enough viable unreleased contenders to push Fortune's Weave out of the running. Intelligent Systems is going to The Game Awards.