Gamescom 2026 is officially underway, and for the next five days Cologne is the place to be for developers and gamers. More than 1,600 exhibitors have descended on the Koelnmesse this year, bringing everything from huge upcoming releases to indie games most of us haven’t discovered yet.
Naturally, we’ve been digging through all of it looking for the roguelikes and roguelites making their debut at the event. It turns out, there’s a lot of them hiding across the show floor, showcases, pavilions, and events. There’s bound to be a few surprises, but let’s take a look at what we know so far.
What Exactly Is Gamescom?
If you’ve never paid much attention to Gamescom before, the easiest way to explain it is that it’s absolutely enormous.
Held every year in Cologne, Germany, it’s been running since 2009 and has grown into the world’s biggest gaming event. Unlike shows built primarily around industry announcements, Gamescom brings pretty much everyone together. Developers and publishers are there to show their games, the industry uses it for meetings and business, and hundreds of thousands of players turn up to actually get their hands on the latest games and announcements.
Last year’s event welcomed around 357,000 visitors from 128 countries, alongside more than 34,000 trade visitors and 1,568 exhibitors.
Gamescom 2026 is even bigger.
There are more than 1,600 exhibitors from 67 countries, with around 70% coming from outside Germany. The Koelnmesse has 233,000 square metres of exhibition space filled this year, while the indie area alone features more than 420 companies. There are also 47 country pavilions representing 40 countries, making it a pretty good place to discover games that might otherwise never make it onto your radar.
The event isn’t simply five days of wandering around booths either. Gamescom week actually began on August 24 with Gamescom dev, before Opening Night Live officially kicked things off last night with announcements, trailers, and reveals from across the industry. The main Gamescom show runs from August 26-30th, with broadcasts and events continuing throughout the week.
There are currently 846 games listed through Gamescom’s official site alone, ranging from some of the biggest releases on the horizon to tiny indie projects being shown publicly for the first time. Which brings us to the important question…
How many of them are rogue games?
Quite a few, as it turns out.
The Rogue Games Getting Their Moment at Gamescom
Rogue games definitely haven’t been pushed into a quiet corner of the Koelnmesse this year. Several have already appeared during Gamescom’s biggest broadcasts, while others are being shown off as the week continues.
Mewgenics is Heading to Console
Mewgenics is probably the biggest name of the bunch so far. Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel’s cat-breeding tactical roguelike already launched on PC earlier this year, but Opening Night Live brought the news console players have been waiting for. It’s heading to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2 on September 8th.
Ridiculon even turned up to perform Guillotina from the soundtrack live on stage, which isn’t something many roguelikes can put on their gamescom bingo card.
Worms Is Going Roguelike
One of the bigger surprises came from a series that’s been blowing up its own characters for more than 30 years.
Team17 used gamescom to reveal Worms: Galactic Tactics, a new turn-based tactical game that sends the series into roguelike territory. You’ll assemble a squad before heading into the Galactic Gauntlet, where increasingly difficult battles bring new enemies, bosses, upgrades, and plenty of opportunities to accidentally fire something explosive at your own team.
Weapons can be modified and combined into different strategies as you progress through a run, while the destructible environments Worms is known for aren’t going anywhere.
Worms: Galactic Tactics is coming to PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027. Team17 also revealed that a separate core Worms game is in development, so apparently one new collection of homicidal worms wasn’t enough for Gamescom.
Serious Sam Is About to Become a Roguelite
Another familiar series is getting the roguelite treatment with Serious Sam: Shatterverse. This time, reality has broken apart and multiple versions of Sam have been dragged into the same fight. Up to five players can team up to blast their way through shifting universes, collecting boons and choosing run modifiers capable of changing how each attempt plays out.
Death isn’t the end either. Permanent upgrades gradually expand your options between attempts, while unstable anomalies and hidden portals can offer bigger rewards if you’re willing to risk your current run to get them.
There isn’t long to wait for this one. Serious Sam: Shatterverse launches August 31, the day after Gamescom finishes.
Shroom and Gloom Is Serving Up Two Decks
We covered Shroom and Gloom recently, and Team Lazerbeam’s hand-drawn dungeon crawler is another Devolver game getting attention around gamescom.
This one gives you two decks rather than one. Your Explore deck handles everything from searching and unlocking to feeding and fixing, while the Combat deck takes over when something fungal decides it would rather kill you than become dinner.
The latter is unfortunate for the mushrooms because every enemy in Shroom and Gloom is edible. Cards can be upgraded repeatedly, defeated enemies can be skewered, seasoned, roasted, and eaten, and sufficiently adventurous cooks can throw them into a pot to create soups instead.
Shroom and Gloom enters Steam Early Access on September 10th, with a demo already available for anyone who wants an early taste.
Deep Rock Galactic Is Still Going Rogue
Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core isn’t a new Gamescom reveal, but it’s still an important part of this year’s roguelike lineup.
Ghost Ship Games took the co-op mining and shooting of Deep Rock Galactic and rebuilt it around roguelite runs, sending teams of dwarves into procedurally generated expeditions where weapons, upgrades, and builds develop along the way.
It entered Early Access back in May, and Ghost Ship has already been making changes in response to feedback, including plans to rework some of its mechanics.
Anyone discovering it through Gamescom therefore isn’t getting quite the same Rogue Core that arrived a few months ago. Like any good roguelite run, this one is already evolving.
The Godfall Team Has Gone Roguelite Too
Then there’s Armatus, the next game from Godfall developer Counterplay Games. Set in a demon-ravaged Paris, it’s a third-person roguelite shooter that mixes firearms with supernatural powers granted by gods and demons. Runs take you through changing environments filled with enemies and bosses, with different weapons, abilities, and blessings shaping what you’re capable of each time.
Armatus is due to launch in 2026 across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2, with Xbox Game Pass included from day one.
It’ll also be appearing during Xbox’s Gamescom coverage, so we should get another look at exactly how Counterplay plans to follow Godfall with something considerably more rogue-shaped.
The Indie Arena Booth Is Packed with Roguelikes Too
Some of Gamescom’s more interesting rogue games aren’t coming from the huge publishers. They’re hiding over in Hall 10.2.
The Indie Arena Booth is having its biggest year yet, bringing together more than 180 developers from over 40 countries. Several national delegations have joined the party too, which means there’s an enormous number of smaller games fighting for attention among everything else happening in Cologne.
Dungeon Clawler
Stray Fawn Studio’s roguelite Dungeon Clawler has one of the strangest ways of building a run. Instead of simply picking your next item from a shop, you use a claw machine to grab weapons, shields, healing items, and other useful bits from a big pile. What you manage to pull out determines what you can use in combat, while new items and upgrades gradually turn that chaotic collection into something resembling a build.
It’s already available on Steam, but anyone who hasn’t tried it yet can find it among this year’s Indie Arena Booth lineup.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is bringing Will back for another round of dungeon crawling and questionable retail decisions.
The sequel once again splits your time between heading into dangerous areas for loot and returning home to sell whatever survived the journey. This time, Digital Sun is expanding both sides considerably, with new weapons, shop customization, merchants, and increasingly valuable treasures to hunt down.
The original Moonlighter found plenty of fans with that combination of dungeon runs and shopkeeping, so its sequel is easily one of the bigger names lurking around the Indie Arena Booth.
Helcast
Helcast is doing something completely different with Norse mythology. It’s a puzzle roguelite deckbuilder where cards aren’t simply played from your hand. Instead, you’ll place and combine them on a grid, using positioning and synergies to create increasingly powerful attacks.
The developers are showing the game at Gamescom ahead of a planned Steam Early Access launch in Q1 2027, making this one of the earlier opportunities to see whether your puzzle-solving skills are good enough to survive Ragnarök.
We Build Below
We Build Below, is what happens when factory building, tower defense, and roguelite progression all get shoved underground together. Up to three players can descend beneath the surface, establish production chains, gather resources, build defenses, and try to keep everything running while increasingly unpleasant things attack what they’ve created.
Runs are designed around building something capable of surviving the depths, so anyone who has ever looked at a factory game and thought it needed more opportunities to lose everything should feel right at home.
We Who Are About to Die
Belgium is also bringing We Who Are About to Die, a gladiator RPG roguelite where fights are considerably less graceful than the average action game.
Combat is physics-based, meaning weapons have actual weight and momentum rather than simply triggering attack animations. Survive long enough and your gladiator can improve their equipment and career. Die in the arena and somebody else gets their turn.
It left Early Access earlier this year, and Gamescom visitors can now find out whether they’d actually survive the arena themselves.
Brazil Has Brought a Couple of Rogues
Brazil’s first-ever Indie Pavilion includes 35 games, and we’ve already covered two of its roguelike representatives here at AllRogues.
Tupi: The Legend of Arariboia combines tactical roguelite combat with a creature-fusion system inspired by games like Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. Creatures can be combined into new forms, giving you different possibilities to work with as runs develop.
Sigils of Nightfall, meanwhile, heads into deckbuilding territory, combining roguelike runs with card-based combat and a dark fantasy setting.
With 35 Brazilian indies making the trip, they’re part of a much bigger push to get the country’s developers in front of Gamescom’s enormous audience.
Greece Has Gone Rogue Too
The Greek delegation has nine games in Cologne this year, and two of them should be particularly interesting for rogue fans.
Dunestake combines autobattling with gladiatorial betting, allowing you to put money on fights before watching your carefully assembled combatants attempt to prove you haven’t just made a terrible financial decision.
Luminas: Parasite Reign on the other hand is a party-based roguelite with survivors-like combat and more than 90 upgrade and evolution paths, giving you plenty of opportunities to turn your group into something considerably more dangerous as a run develops.
Between the Indie Arena Booth and the national pavilions alone, you could probably spend most of Gamescom hunting for rogue games without ever making it out of Hall 10.2.
There’s Still Plenty More to Come from Cologne
Gamescom has only just opened its doors, so what we’ve seen so far is almost certainly only the beginning.
The show runs until August 30th, with hundreds of games still being shown across the Koelnmesse and several broadcasts yet to come. The Gamescom Awesome Indies showcase takes place on August 27th, while the Future Games Show: Best of Gamescom will bring things to a close on August 30th.
With so many smaller developers packed into the Indie Arena Booth and national pavilions too, there’s every chance another roguelike or two will catch our attention before everyone packs up and heads home.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on everything happening in Cologne throughout the week and bringing you all the roguelike and roguelite news, announcements, trailers, demos, and surprise reveals as they happen.
After all, with more than 1,600 exhibitors and hundreds of games to get through, there are bound to be a few more rogues hiding in there somewhere.