Fenris Creations, Embark, Warhorse, and Wargaming Headline the AI and Games Conference 2026 | 23/09/26
Fenris Creations, Embark, Warhorse, and Wargaming Headline the AI and Games Conference 2026 | 23/09/26
Hello one and all, and welcome back to . I’m back from my recent trip to LA, and it’s time to make some noise about the AI and Games Conference 2026!
That’s right kids, yer Da’s favourite video games conference returns to London on November 10th and 11th. So with the event just under two months away, it’s time to start sharing what we have planned for this year. It’s a pretty spectacular programme, and we’re very excited to have the best of AI in the video games industry come together once more. We’ll be announcing a handful of sessions for this week’s edition, and the rest of the programme will be teased to you over the next few weeks. So let’s get started!
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AI and Games Conference 2026
That’s right we’re only a few weeks away from this year’s event, and our team are working away on the 101 little things we need to make it all come together. As anyone who has ran an event or two will know, it’s a lot of work to get all the finer things in place so it all goes as smoothly as possible.
But let’s get to it: what have we got planned? What can you expect to see at the event this year?
2026 Will Be Our Biggest Event Yet!
This year is our most packed event yet as we will have more sessions spread across the two days. Some of them you will hear about today, others in the coming weeks in the newsletter and on the social - though we will be populating them all on the website as soon as we can if you want to see the full list. Plus, we have a few extra surprises planned which should add a bit more excitement to the event.
As a reminder, the key information is below:
Date: Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th November, 2026
Location: Plexal, HereEast, Olympic Park, London
Transport: Accessible via Hackney Wick (Overground), Stratford (National Rail, DLR, Elizabeth Line, London Underground)
Tickets: Available now at our ticketing site, with discounts for indie devs and students. With thanks to Studio Atelico as our 2026 scholarship sponsor.
Group Orders: Contact our conference admin team for a discount on groups of 5 or more.
Merch: We have some fun new merch (hopefully) on its way this year. But you can pre-order your conference t-shirt and Crit plushie while buying your ticket (merch pre-orders only valid with ticket purchase).
Presentation Space: If you’re looking to showcase your wares or advertise to our audience, we still have space in main hub area for businesses to present.
Sponsorship Opportunities: There’s still sponsorship inventory available for businesses to support the event and get their brand in front of our audience.
For both presentation space and sponsorships please contact our team for more info.
Once again we’re grateful to the good folks at the University of Staffordshire’s London campus who are supporting the event this year, and we’re looking forward to welcoming their staff and some of their students to the event.
Selecting the Programme
This year we welcome another fairly stacked line-up of speakers, and once again the quality bar has been set very high. It proved a sticky conversation towards the end as we had a lot of discussion internally as to what we could squeeze across two days, totalling over 30 sessions. We have an acceptance rate of around 27% against the available slots, down from the year before which was around 42% - and this is despite us increasing the number of available sessions for submissions. This gives you an indication of the increase in the number of submissions we’re receiving year-on-year as we prove ourselves to be not just ‘the little Game AI conference that could’, but rather the leading event on hype-free and meaningful AI discourse in the video games industry.
Sadly this means we can’t squeeze everyone in, and my apologies and thanks to those who submitted. It’s not an easy task and the closing decisions - which we conducted while our team was at Gamescom - meant someone had to lose out. Again, let me take a moment to thank you all for submitting, and fingers crossed we can welcome you to the stage in 2027!
Our First 2026 Programme Announcements!
Okay, without further ado let’s get to what you scrolled down to see. Who is coming to present this year? We’re both starting and ending the 2026 conference with some absolute bangers!
Embark Will Share How Their ML-Powered Animations Work in ARC Raiders
We’re kicking off day one with an opening keynote that addresses a question lingering on many a game developers’ mind this time last year: “how do the giant robots in ARC Raiders move around so smoothly?” After presenting on the physics-based locomotion systems at GDC earlier in the year, we have a follow-up presentation at the AI and Games Conference 2026 to give us a bit more insight into the process - and save many of you an expensive flight to California!
How We Taught the Robots in Arc Raiders to Move (Eventually)
Simona Petravić (TBC) / Embark Studios
Wargaming to Deliver a Double-Bill on AI Integration
We’re excited to welcome the good folks over at Wargaming who have not one, but two talks exploring the challenges faced in integrating a variety of AI techniques into game production pipelines.
First up, we have Dmitry Matveev discussing the efforts in deploying a strategic decision layer to World of Tanks: HEAT that gathers contextual information about the current team loadout and strategic intent to ensure the right AI bot is deployed to support players when needed.
Shipping a Real-Time Strategic Bot Recommender in World of Tanks: HEAT
Dmitriy Matveev / Wargaming / November 11th
Plus we welcome back Olga Titova who presented last year on the challenges, opportunities, and risks of companionship with AI models to discuss how the studio has shifted and adapted its approach to AI tools in the past year or so: an interesting insight into a conversation seldom discussed publicly.
The Meta Changed: 18 Months of User Strategies, Model Folklore, and Shifting AI Economics
Olga Titova / Wargaming / November 10th
Warhorse Studios Return to Talk More About Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2!
Last year we were spoiled to have not one, but two talks from Warhorse Studios on their popular RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2! In 2025 we had Vadim Petrov swing by to talk about the perception systems in KC2, plus Petr Smrček presented on the challenge of simulating thousands of NPCs at once in the game. This year we welcome Matej Marko (who presented on the AI architecture of KCD2 at GDC in 2025) to talk about the navigation systems used across the two entries of the series.
I mean, this is the AI and Games Conference: we love a good navigation talk! Don’t worry, we have (at least) three talks lined up for navmesh sickos - you’ll be well taken care of this year!
Navigation in Kingdom Come: Deliverance Games
Matej Marko / Warhorse Studios / November 10th
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Project TALOS: Arm Shares Their Experience in Building On-Device LLMs for Mobile
In recent months we’ve seen mobile chip manufacturer Arm ramp up their efforts in deploying technologies for use of smaller AI models locally on device. Demo game Neural Dawn (shown above) was built in collaboration with UK studio Sumo Digital to showcase the potential for AI rendering on mobile. Now in November we’ll hear more about applications for gameplay systems. We welcome Ben Clark and Matthew Crouch to talk about TALOS: a project to build an on-device AI for controlling NPCs and strategy behaviour in an RTS game powered by a LLM-based architecture, all running natively on Arm-based mobile CPU.
TALOS: Building Adaptive Enemy AI with On-Device LLMs
Ben Clark & Matthew Crouch / Arm / November 10th
Splash Damage Talk SCUM’s Wildlife Update
Back in June the popular open-world survival game SCUM saw a major update dubbed Into the Wild, as wildlife was re-introduced into the large open world. The original animal system had been removed earlier on the game’s lifecycle largely as a result of the performance overhead it was introducing. However, the team at Splash Damage - who bought SCUM developers Gamepires from Jagex earlier this year - joined the year with one of their major efforts being to completely rebuild the wildlife system so it would work in the current versions of the game.
The Making of SCUM's Wildlife: Scaling AI for a Live Multiplayer Game
Jayanth Erode Mani / Splash Damage / November 11th
Fenris Creations Present the First Insight into Their Collaboration with Google DeepMind
One of the biggest talking points not just in AI for games, but the industry as a whole was the announcement earlier this year that Fenris Creations - formerly CCP Games - the creators of EVE Online had not only gone independent, but that Google DeepMind had acquired a minority stake in the company and will partner with them as part of their ongoing R&D research efforts.
What does all of that mean? What kind of collaborations would that foster? How does Google DeepMind benefit from working with Fenris, and indeed vice-versa? A lot of big questions, and now it’s time for some (preliminary) answers.
For our closing keynote of the AI and Games Conference 2026 we welcome Fenris Creations CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson to join us and talk about the work that’s been conducted thus far. This is to our knowledge the first time that either Fenris or Deepmind will be speaking about the results of this collaboration, and we’re excited to welcome both teams to London.
From Announcement to Implementation: Building an AI Research Partnership in Games
Hilmar Veigar Pétursson / Fenris Creations / November 11th
Go On Then, Get Your Tickets…
What are you waiting for? All this served up for you right here is a solid reminder of why this is the event on AI in the games industry, and we’re just getting started! I mean I only shared about 20% of the schedule with you today. There’s still plenty of exciting stuff to be announced, I guarantee it.
Speaking of, in the next couple of weeks both here and on our socials on BlueSky and LinkedIn we’re be announcing everything else on the schedule. Including talks from Amazon Web Services, Artificial Agency, Bitpart AI, Databricks, Elsewhere Entertainment, Katapult Ridge, Havok, Krafton, Meaning Machine, Riot Games, Qualcomm and more! Plus presentations from researchers at Bristol Digital Game Lab, University of Foggia, University of York’s IGGI PhD programme, and Heriot-Watt University - finally we have some Scottish university representation! I’m not biased, what you talking about?
I’ll go leave you to grab your tickets now, and next week we’ll be announcing more stuff in between writing up some actual stories for this here newsletter! In the meantime I’m going to try and grab some more sleep.
Take care folks, and catch you next week!
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Source: AI and Games · aiandgames.com