A Comprehensive Guide To Mastering Steam Next Fest

Answering all your Steam Next Fest Questions & More

Jan 23, 2026

Steam Next Fest is one of the most powerful visibility moments on Steam and one of the easiest to misunderstand. Every Next Fest thousands of developers participate with wildly different outcomes, often blaming luck, timing, or the algorithm when results fall short. Unfortunately, Next Fest is increasingly competitive and far less forgiving than it used to be.

In this article, I break down how Steam Next Fest actually works today, what has changed in recent years, which signals Steam cares about, and how to approach demos, wishlists, and timing so Next Fest becomes a multiplier for existing momentum rather than a roll of the dice.

I’m trying an experiment this week. I love indie devs and it breaks my heart seeing hard working devs flying blind when it comes to marketing. With that in mind i’m trying an experiment where I offer free 30 minute consultation for anyone interested on Thursdays between 18:00 - 20:00 CET. If there’s enough interest in this i’ll open up the amount of slots and times I do it.

Free 30 Min Consultation

What is Steam Next Fest?

Steam Next Fest is a one week week festival (next one is in February) that focuses on upcoming games with playable demos. For many games it’s a great chance to get a massive increase in visibility. This is largely because it’s featured on the front page of Steam and your only competing against other upcoming games with demos rather than the entire Steam store like normal.

It’s important to note that Next Fest is not the magic bullet it once was. When Steam first introduced Next Fest it featured less than 1000 games in 2023 and now regularly has between 2000 - 3000 games during the 3 Next Fests that happen each year.

How does Steam Next Fest Work?

To accommodate this they made some big changes to how Next Fest works. It’s a bit irrelevant to list all the changes that happened during the October 2024 Steam Next Fest (google Oct. 2024 steam next fest changes if you’re curious), since it hasn’t changed much since then. Instead i’ll just list the most important ones to make sure you’re not operating on any outdated information.

Live streams are no longer as important as they once were, but they’re still nice to have.
You can only join Next Fest once.
All games are given equal visibility in the beginning, then users start seeing more personalized recommendations as the week goes on.

Live Streams used to have a really big role to play in Next Fest visibility but that’s been heavily deprioritized. There’s still a section showing games that have live streams active, so it’s still worth having. My advice would be to use a tool like Robostreamer to loop footage of gameplay or even better a well known influencer playing your game. Live streams are still a great community engagement tool to take advantage of but its no longer a crucial aspect to focus on for Next Fest.

The most important change to focus on that is very relevant to the upcoming Next Fest is how their discovery algorithm works. Here’s a direct quote from Steam’s most recent Next Fest Developer Q&A:

“So, historically, every single carousel that you've seen on NextFest is randomly sorted. The idea is that you know, everyone's coming in on the same page and that everyone gets you know, more or less equal visibility in that regard. As NextFest has evolved and progressed, we've sort of made a change there. The first 48 hours of NextFest are still totally randomly sorted. However, past that point, we're using machine learning smarts to better match people to games. So, the idea is past the 48 hour point, everyone coming on to the NextFest page while signed in is going to have a very different experience based on what they play, what their friends are playing, what kinds of games they've shown interest in in the past. And so that's kind of a new level of customization and personalization that we are trying out which does mean you know that first 48 hours of NexFest are important because that's the data that we're using to train the model. So make sure you're putting your best foot forward.”

TLDR the first 48 hours of Next Fest are very important. While valve makes it very clear the games past the first 2 days will be surfaced based on the personal preferences of the user, you’re overall performance on those two days definitely matters! If a user is showing a strong interest in a specific genre, art style, etc the better you perform through Next Fest the more likely you are to show up on that users personalized feed instead of other games. Next Fest also has trending charts that are shown to every user, so the better you perform the more likely you are to be included in the various top performing chart categories.

But what what do I mean by perform better? Let’s reference the developer Q&A again:

“What engagement signals during NextFest most strongly influence postfest visibility? Um, that one's a little difficult to answer one because there's a bit of secret sauce involved. But, um, there's a couple of things that I can tell you don't matter. Demo completion rate does not matter. How much time people spent in your demo does not matter. Play time doesn't matter. These are all things that are going to vary really widely between what kind of demo you've got and you know what kind of genre the base game is. And we think it would be unfair to try and judge a quality of a demo on something like Playtime when there are some rogueike demos that you could theoretically play forever versus, you know, some kind of narrative driven gameplay thing that would be done in 20 minutes. So we don't use any of that. What we do care about is the number of people who are interacting with your demo, who are interacting with your store page. That is something that is valuable to us.”

I still think focusing on things like playtime and competition rate is good, as these are strong signals of a fun demo. However, as Steam stated above they are more clearly valuing things like visiting your steam page, wishlisting, following, downloading your demo, opening your demo, etc. All of these activities would fall under “interacting with your demo & store page”.

When should I join Next Fest?

Using Next Fest as a Primer

Demo launch = momentum creation
Steam Next Fest = momentum amplification

A common line of thinking is to launch a demo during Next Fest and use it to get momentum and get the marketing ball rolling. This is often a mistake for two reasons.

1: You should launch your demo months ahead of Next Fest so that you have ample time to iron out any bugs and react to feedback. You want the best demo possible going into Next Fest (competition is fierce). Another reason is that you can have two marketing beats instead of one. If done correctly you should treat your demo launch similar to a game launch. Reach out to creators, press, and get your community excited about your demo launch. In an ideal world you should make a big marketing beat out of launching your demo then improve it over a few months then add a big exciting update to the demo for Next Fest.

2: The second reason is that games that go into Next Fest with substantial wishlists tend to gain way more wishlists during Next Fest then games going in with a little. This is pretty concrete evidence that using Next Fest as a primer is not a great idea. And guess what one of the best ways to increase your daily wishlist rate is before Next Fest? Having a demo!

Long story short: Launch your demo at least a few months before Next Fest > Make a big marketing beat out of it > Fix bugs and react to feedback > Go into Next Fest with a big demo update and polished demo.

For those of you in the back screaming “but what about X game that launched as part of Next Fest and did great”? If you go seeking for this you will absolutely find examples of this happening. However in most cases these were either very experienced teams that had already QA tested their demo a bunch before Next Fest or games that had their demo tested as part of playtests before officially launching the demo.

Use a separate demo page

Using a separate page for your demo allows you to get reviews on your demo. This is absolutely something you want. Best case scenario is you get lots of good reviews and it helps land you on “Trending Free” and worst scenario is you get a ton of bad reviews and you can simply take down the separate page and work on improvements. You can take down the separate page for the demo whenever you want but the reviews will not reset if you launch it again later. The reviews you get on your demo are a very strong signal of how ready your demo is for Next Fest.

If you want to begin getting feedback on your demo ASAP but feel its too early and don’t want to risk negative reviews on your demo page i’d recommend using the Steam playtesting tools to do a few rounds of playtesting on your demo until your confident enough to officially launch the demo.

How Effective is Steam Next Fest?

Thankfully, friend of the newsletter and marketing extraordinaire, Chris Zukowski, from How To Market A Game already collected some great data answering this question.

Chart & Data created and collected by Chris from How To Market A Game

What Should I do before Steam Next Fest?

I’d recommend beginning to prepare for Next Fest no later than at least a month beforehand. During Next Fest you want to put your best foot forward, so your Steam Page & demo needs to be in the best state possible.

Reach out to Press & Creators

Create a list of relevant Press & Creators you’d like to cover your game. Press & Creators often make a ton of Next Fest focused content highlighting their favorite or top performing demos throughout the week. Conversion rates for reaching out are typically very low (that is normal) so the more creators & press you reach out to the better. Try to create a combination of creators with small to medium audiences as well as the big creators in your specific genre. There’s probably no point in sending an email to PewDiePie, but its worth taking a shot at the big dogs in your specific niche.

After you have a list plan to send 2-3 emails before Next Fest begins.

Email 1: About a month before. Send Key to next fest demo build with an embargo date.
Email 2: 1 week or shortly before Next Fest. Reminder email with key to next fest demo build
Email 3 : Either on the first day of next fest or shortly before. Final reminder email.

This is not an exact science and the exact amount of emails and when to send them depends on a lot of factors, but this is a good base timeline. In the emails include access to the Next Fest demo build (if its ready) so that they can access it earlier.

I wouldn’t recommend sending more than 3 emails you’ll probably come off as annoying and do more harm than good at that point. Be human in your emails and make sure each email is different, don’t just send almost the same thing 3 times. Try different hooks in your email subject or gifs in your email to better convert.

Don’t forget to include and update your press kit!

Social Media

In an ideal world you have an engaged community and a mountain of wishlists going into Next Fest. If you’ve been slacking on social media, now’s a great time to get those accounts active again. You basically want to be making as much noise as you can about your game before and during Next Fest, social media is one great way to do that. In the month leading up to Next Fest i’d recommend trying to post around 3 times a week on your preferred social accounts.

Launch and Market Your Demo Early

Treat your demo launch like a game launch. Announce it on socials, reach out to creators & press, active your community.

Test, Improve, & Update your Demo

We already talked about this above so I won’t go too deep into this. If you’re not sitting on a well polished demo that had multiple rounds of feedback i’d reconsider if you should join this Next Fest.

I highly encourage planning a significant content update to your demo for Next Fest. This will get your existing community excited bringing back old players during Next Fest.

If you want to QA or get feedback on the updates you have planned for Next Fest i’d recommend giving a small portion of your existing audience access to the next fest demo updates early. This not only helps QA your updates, but also makes your most eager fans feel valued.

You can do this by creating a secret channel in Discord and inviting your most engaged members or having people apply through a link and give access to X amount of people.

Setup ways to automate feedback collection and bug reports

For many games Next Fest will be when their demo is played the most and thus a great chance to get feedback. You’d rather learn about what needs to be improved during Next Fest than when you launch.

Another reason for setting up automated feedback collection and bug reports is that if you don’t give players an easy way to send this to you they will be way more tempted to leave a negative review to make sure you see the issue they’re having.

A great example of this is the Tabletop Tavern Demo. The main menu, end of demo screen, and pause menu all have a places to report a bug. They even went a step further and automated it so that the bug reports automatically get sent to a discord channel where the dev can directly reply to the player who left it.

Optimize your Steam Store Page

Going into Next Fest your Steam Page should be updated with the most relevant visuals and information. Here’s a few things to revisit, update, or add to your Steam page before Next Fest:

Revisit your Steam Tags and make sure they’re accurate
Localize your steam page (and demo)
Update Screenshots & Gifs
Add any relevant reviews from press or creators
Make sure you’re trailer is updated to reflect the quality the demo is at
Revisit your short description and Steam Page
Update capsule art if needed

Cross promote from your previous game

If you’ve released a previous game, you can cross promote from that game and let people know about your new game in Next Fest. You can do this on the Steam page with a post or in the game itself by having a subtle link in the main menu.

Optimize Demo Funnels

Make sure you demo is well optimized to encourage wishlists, funneling people to your discord or newsletter are nice bonus points as well. At a minimum you should have clear CTA’s to wishlist your game in your main menu & demo end screen. You can also take it up a notch and block content behind joining the discord or newsletter (if relevant for your game). Tabletop Tavern blocked 2 of its 4 playable heroes behind getting a code when joining the discord and Newsletter resulting in thousands of Discord joins and newsletter signups.

Add Steam Achievements

If you don’t have any Steam achievements in your demo yet now’s a great time to do it. Make sure to include at least one you can easily get in the first 15 minutes of playing (so players know there are achievements), one that requires finishing the demo (to motivate players to finish), and a combination of silly and difficult to get ones.

What should I do during Steam Next Fest?

Focus on making as much noise as possible during Next Fest. Be very active on social media & engaging with your community on both Steam & Discord. Reshare positive content about your game each day. If a streamer had a hilarious moment or a player posted a great comment, amplify it (retweet it, post it in Discord, make a tiktok video, etc). This not only markets your game to new people, but it also validates it’s a fun game (“Look, others are enjoying it too”)

Community Focused Retention

Do fun things that keep your community engaged and coming back to play your demo. Here’s a few cool ideas:

Daily Community Challenge: Tiny Glade did this during Next Fest by having different building themes ( “House on a Hill” or “Tiny Wizard Tower) every day of the festival. Checkmate Showdown kept its community interested with a daily scenario mode in the demo. Starting a week before and continuing through Next Fest, they delivered a different chess situation every day for players to solve or play through. Tears of Metal introduced special daily gameplay modifiers and encounters with “brutal difficulty laced with a touch of silliness”.

Exclusive Rewards: Beating the demo for Tactical Breach Wizards unlocked an exclusive cosmetic that carried over to the full game. Lynked: Banner of the Spark rewarded exclusive cosmetics for completing specific quests during Next Fest.

Leverage FOMO & Urgency: Remember how we talked about how the first 48 hours of Next Fest were very important? Once Human leveraged urgency and FOMO to retain players right at the start of Next Fest. The developers announced that if you played the demo for at least 3 hours within the first 24 hours of Next Fest, you’d earn an exclusive vehicle skin that carries over to the full game

Daily Devlogs: Half Sword’s developers came up with a brilliant retention approach: treat Next Fest like a week long hype campaign for upcoming features. At the start of Next Fest they announced “we didn’t want to rush out something that wasn’t ready” for the demo, acknowledging that no new build would drop immediately . However, to give players something to look forward to each day they promised that “Every single day of the Steam Next Fest, we’ll reveal a new sneak peek from upcoming maps, weapons, and new gameplay systems”

Surprise content update: A great way to bring back players who tried the demo earlier in the week and excite new ones is to drop a surprise content update in the second half of Next Fest. Bonus points if its something the players have been asking for!

Competitions: Engage your community with contests like capturing the best screenshot or climbing leaderboards.

There are endless ways you can engage your community in fun and clever ways. It’s up to you to be creative and figure out what makes the most sense for your game and community!

Be on standby for Bugs & Feedback

During the week of Nest Fest I would slow down development and instead be prepared to immediately firefight any negative bugs or feedback. The quicker you can react and fix issues the higher chance you can turn someone with a complaint to a passionate fan. Quickly reacting to issues is one of the most sure fire ways to garner good will with players. Not responding too and ignoring issues is the fastest way to lose that good will.

Follow up with creators & press if your game pops off

During Next Fest email creators and press that didn’t cover your game if you get any cool press. Something like: “Hey you should check out our demo that was listed as top 10 demos in next fest”.

What should I do after Steam Next Fest?

Share cool stuff with your players

Share how many wishlists you gained, people that played your demo, etc. If you’re tracking data in your game make a cool chart and share “how many goblins were killed”, “ how many houses were built”, “how many adventurers died”.

Continue the conversation

Let players know what’s coming next and what to expect in the next few months. Continue to provide updates and talk to your community on Steam & Discord at least (or wherever your community is) once a month.

Don’t forget to update those that joined your newsletter! In your closing Next Fest outreach make sure to include a survey where players can let you know where they want to see the game go from here.

Keep updating the demo

Your demo is one of the strongest marketing tools in your arsenal. Continue to add small updates to and improve you demo until launch.

Should I launch my game after Next Fest?

Chris wrote a great article on this. The TLDR is that many other devs have the same idea to launch after Next Fest and capitalize on momentum. So you will likely have more competition than normal if you launch in this window making it harder to get into and stay on things like New and Trending and Popular upcoming. My two cents is that you should avoid this strategy unless you already have at least 20k wishlists and feel confident you’ll be one of the big winners of Next Fest that knows they will stand above the competition. But fair warning there are bound to be some high quality games by experienced AA or AAA studios releasing in this window. Overall I agree with Chris that devs spend far to much time overthinking the release date.

Steam Next Fest Checklist

Conclusion

Next Fest is always something game devs get super stressed (and excited) about and unfortunately I come across SO many devs going about it completely the wrong way. I hope this article empowers you to get the most you possibly can out of Next Fest! Feel free to leave any specific questions in the comments or book a free consultation.

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?