Arm at GDC Festival of Gaming 2026: What mobile game developers need to know

Today’s players are spending more time in games, returning more often, and expecting experiences that feel increasingly rich, responsive and persistent. These trends emphasize issues that that are already familiar in mobile games: steady frame rates, thermal behavior, power consumption, visual consistency,  and system stability. However, these challenges are being exasperated as developers push toward more advanced graphics techniques and deeper use of AI for console-class visuals, often within tight performance and power envelopes across a vast and diverse mobile device landscape. The result is a game development environment defined less by isolated features and more by trade-offs.

At Arm, we see these trade-offs first-hand, working alongside developers and engine teams as they balance performance, power, visual fidelity, and player experience across an increasingly diverse mobile landscape. We help developers navigate real-world production challenges every day, underpinned by Arm technology that powers 99% of the world’s smartphones and mobile optimization tools like Arm Performance Studio. This is why Arm is hosting a developer summit at the GDC Festival of Gaming 2026: to create space for practical, experience-driven conversations about how mobile games are actually being built today, and how they will evolve in the years ahead.

What you’ll learn at Arm’s developer summit at GDC 2026

Our developer summit will cover a wide range of practical mobile gaming topics, including Papergames’ implementation of real-time global illumination in the popular mobile title “Love and Deepspace”, mobile performance tuning with Unreal Engine, and how to use the latest neural graphics technologies and upscaling in practice. Together, these sessions provide developers with actionable insights, tools, and resources to improve both game development workflows and overall gaming experience. The full agenda for the event, which takes place in Room WH2011 at the Moscone Convention Center, is listed in the table below.

Alongside the talks, there will be hands-on demo stations covering performance analysis, graphics optimization, neural graphics rendering, upscaling techniques, and engine workflows that encourage experimentation and practical learning. These will include the first public demonstrations of neural technology applications from Arm’s 2026 roadmap, which feature content from respected game developers.

Mobile gaming trends shaping 2026 and beyond

Across the summit, speakers will also reflect on broader game development trends shaping mobile gaming in 2026 and beyond. These include:

• Smarter upscaling shifting from late-stage optimization to a core design consideration. Technologies like Arm Accuracy Super Resolution (Arm ASR) and Neural Super Sampling (NSS) use temporal techniques to improve visual quality while respecting performance and power budgets.
• Consistency beats peak performance, with smooth frame rates, application stability, and predictable thermal behavior impacting player engagement as much as headline performance and visuals.   
• More compelling, dynamic gameplay, with AI being increasingly embedded directly into in-game systems rather than just for tooling, enabling more reactive, richer non-player characters (NPCs) and workloads. However, the developer trade-off is how to integrate AI to enhance gameplay immersion without compromising performance or stability on the mobile hardware.

Visit Arm’s developer summit at GDC 2026

Arm’s developer summit at GDC 2026 offers the opportunity to learn about what’s working in production and how to apply real-world, practical lessons to the next generation of games.