Senior international Austrian game developers judge promising student projects

Time is flying as we are preparing for the 4th edition of the Austrian Talent Award in 2026!

Thanks to everyone who supported the Austrian Talent Award since its establishment in 2023 and helped making it the success it has became in such a short time. Thanks to Team PGDA, LEVEL UP – The Gaming Festival, Florian Jindra & FH Salzburg and of course the wonderful student teams who submitted astonishing projects, making the award an important landmark in the Austrian gaming community. And last but not least, thanks to all judges who provided a bit of their precious time to review all submissions and offered their extensive experience to up and coming talent!

The core idea for this Austrian wide talent award remains the same, this initiative offers student & scholar projects the spotlight they deserve. Still somehow unnoticed from a broad media publicity, local universities and secondary schools across Austria have established well received curriculums for game developers in the last 20 years, offering high quality education that opens a lot of opportunities for a national, but also international career. All those educational sites paved the way for a new generation of Austrian game developers, which already manifested in award-winning games and studios.

In 2025 we continue with our idea to invite successful Austrian game developers who made an impressive international career at studios or publishers around the world, to look back to our beloved local scene and evaluate the next generation of Austrian developers, on their brink to a successful career in games.

PGDA is very proud and honoured to present the judges for the Talent Award 2026, who are willing to offer a bit of their precious spare time to judge the very impressive range of projects students and scholars are creating every year.

A big applause to…

Markus Hofer	Elke Trummer	Stephan Sosau
Senior Technical Animator –RawPowerGames	Technical Animator – Larian Studios	Art Director & Co-Founder – ClockStone
Markus was born and raised in South Tyrol and later studied at FH Salzburg. He has five years of game development experiences and previously worked at Ubisoft Germany before landing at RawPowerGames.	Elke did her bachelor studies in Multimedia Art at FH Salzburg. She worked briefly at Mi’pu’mi Games before landing her current position at Larian Studios.	Stephan is Art Director and Co-Founder at Innsbruch-based indie studio ClockStone, known for the succesful Bridge Constructor series and LEGO Bricktales. Originally from Tyrol, he is now living in rural Japan.

The PGDA board is extremely happy that Marlus, Elke and Stephan agreed to form the team of judges for this year’s talent award. Like last year, we are proud to offer cross-continental collaboration and having Asia on board once more!

All three judges have more than 10 years of experience each and worked in different kinds of organizational structures, from indie to AAA studios. Part of their day-to-day job is to evaluate projects and teams, but also help individuals to find their way into the sometimes not too easy game development industry. Mentoring and supporting talents comes naturally to all four of them, so who would be better suited to assess the creativity, quality, but also commercial viability of the submitted projects in order to crown this year’s winner of the PGDA Talent Award!

Thanks to all teams who already submitted their projects for 2026. If you have not – the submission remains open until today, April 5^th 23:59.

Everyone currently studying at a university or attending a secondary school in Austria offering a games curriculum and working on a game project is eligible to submit their title at the Talent Award 2026! Rest assured, the jury of professional senior game developers will take the time to properly evaluate – based on transparent criteria guidelines – all submissions to identify the best games, assessing creativity, quality, but also commercial viability of each title.

The shortlist of the Talent Award 2026 will be announced beginning of May. The best three games/teams make it on the shortlist and will be invited to showcase their titles at LEVEL UP – The Gaming Festival, taking place in Salzburg on May 23^rd & 24^th, 2026. The winner of the Talent Award 2025 will be announced on Sunday at the main stage of the festival.

The judges are looking forward to playing the submitted projects and to evaluate the accompanying documents to make their call for the shortlist based on the following criteria:

1. Build/playable version of the game
2. Pitch Deck
3. Trailer, Screenshots & Packshot
4. PR-Factsheet
5. Commercial potential
6. Comprehensive presentation as well as interaction of all assets

Award Ceremony

These comprehensive criteria require an according reward which PGDA is proudly offering. The Talent Award winner team will receive the following prizes:

• The winning team gets a booth at gamescom in Cologne in August 2026
  • This booth will be part of the WKO “Gemeinschaftsstand”
  • This prize has a monetary value of ca. EUR 5.000.-
  • Sponsored by established Austrian games studios & PGDA
  • PGDA also sponsors a MeetToMatch ticket for the winning team
• The winning team gets a 6-month mentoring program supported by established studios and local senior developers across all disciplines
  • This will help the team to shape their project and take the first steps in a possible commercial future

Thanks for your attention and stay tuned for more information to come soon!

Applications open until April 6th 23:59

Find the full terms & conditions here.

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