Games Transformed’s bill spans Guantánamo and union drives
The volunteer-run London festival's first named sessions bring Mansoor Adayfi, Rasheed Abueideh and the IWGB's game workers to Bethnal Green.
- When
- Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, 2026
- Where
- The Three Colts, Pelican House and Proposition Studios, Bethnal Green, London
- Cost
- Weekend pass from £45 plus booking fee; day passes from £20; under-12s free
Games Transformed has started naming what happens at its fourth edition, which takes over three Bethnal Green venues in East London from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1. The announcement promises more than 80 panels, workshops, playtests and performances and calls itself "just a taste," so there is no timetable yet. There is already enough to see what kind of games festival this is: one where the unions get equal billing with the designers.
The opening of the gameplay reveal trailer for Dreams on a Pillow, the 1948 Nakba game by Rasheed Abueideh, who is on the Games Transformed bill. The full trailer, with sound, is on Steam.
The session I'd cross London for is "Do Not Forget Us Here: Games Within, Against and Beyond Guantanamo." It pairs Mansoor Adayfi, the writer held without charge at Guantánamo for 14 years, with Abertay University's Darshana Jayemanne. Both belong to the team behind GTMO 441, the game being built with Adayfi, not about Adayfi, which starts from the games detainees improvised to get through confinement.
The labor strand is just as direct. "Gamers of the World, Unite!" comes from the IWGB Game Workers union and the audio committee of Equity, the performers' union, and promises to teach "how to fight the big bosses." Around it sit an Organizing 101 workshop for game workers and a panel called "Grand Theft Labour," speakers still unnamed.
The workshops treat games as tools more than subjects. Clara Greo's "Ethical tech choices: The Organisers Dilemma" is a cooperative decision game modeled on the boardgame The King's Dilemma: a table of organizers argues over which tech tools to adopt, with AI, the environment and disability justice among the pressures.
Rasheed Abueideh is on the bill too, session not yet titled. Killscreen first wrote about Abueideh in 2016, when Apple said the Gaza game Liyla and the Shadows of War did not belong in the App Store's Games category. The follow-up, Dreams on a Pillow, is a stealth-puzzle game built on a folk tale from the 1948 Nakba. A decade ago that argument was with an app store. This festival starts from the other side of it.
Weekend passes start at £45 plus a booking fee, and the early-bird tier has already sold out.
Announcement graphics for Games Transformed 2026: the panel and workshop lists, three sessions named so far, and the ticket launch. Courtesy Games Transformed.
Festivals like this one rarely make the games press. Killscreen's free newsletter finds the work at the edges of game culture and sends it to you.
