UK Best Places to Work Awards 2026 Winners Revealed

UK Best Places to Work Awards 2026 Crowns 25 Studios

The UK Best Places to Work Awards 2026 winners were revealed at the Royal Institution in London on October 1. It closed out a big day. That day began with the GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit. Twenty-five companies across small, mid-sized and large categories took home main awards, while a handful of studios collected special honours recognising everything from environmental work to diversity and training. And they're all celebrating now.

The ceremony followed a summit. It drew 79 representatives. They came from 41 companies. That guest list stretched well beyond game developers, pulling in AAA, AA and indie studios alongside consultancy firms, training providers and educational institutes, which means it's not the narrow crowd you'd expect. And it was, by any measure, an industry-wide gathering rather than a closed shop.

How the Main Awards Are Judged

The scoring system behind the main Best Places to Work honours is worth understanding, because it puts most of the weight on the people doing the work rather than the people running the studio. An employee survey accounts for 80% of the final score. A company survey makes up the remaining 20%.

That split matters. A studio can talk a good game about culture, but its staff get the loudest vote.

The awards were sponsored by Amiqus, Playground Games, IO Interactive, Games London and Special Effect.

Small Studios Make a Big Noise

Ten small companies made the winners list: Fireshine Games, Lively, MLC Studio, Playstack, Silent Games, Snap Finger Click, Stellar Entertainment Software, Swipe Right, Tanglewood Games and Uplift Games.

Snap Finger Click had a night to remember. They won big. The studio picked up a Best Places to Work award and the Diversity Award, a double that few others managed, and it's the kind of night that doesn't come around often, because when you're a studio that's up against so many others, you can't take anything for granted. And they're celebrating.

Mid-Sized and Large Company Winners

Playground Games presented the mid-sized category, which went to Behaviour Interactive UK, Electric Square, Expression Games, Fenris Creations, Hangar 13, HundredStar Games, Kinetic Games, Maverick Games, Rare, Studio Gobo and Wushu Studios.

The large company winners were Frontier Developments, Jagex: The RuneScape Company, Playground Games and TT Games.

Special Awards Spread Across the Industry

The special categories produced a genuinely mixed set of results. No single studio swept the board.

• Corporate Social Responsibility Award, presented by Special Effect: Jagex: The RuneScape Company won, with NaturalMotion Games, Playground Games, Rocksteady Studios and Wushu Studios also nominated.
• Diversity Award: Snap Finger Click won, shortlisted alongside Maverick Games, NaturalMotion Games and Rare.
• Education Award, presented by IO Interactive: Middlesbrough indie Dink won, beating Electric Square, Jagex: The RuneScape Company, Rocksteady Studios and Two Point Studios.
• Environmental Award, sponsored by Games London: Rare took the prize again, with NaturalMotion Games, Playground Games and Rocksteady Studios in the running.
• Health and Wellbeing Award: Hangar 13 won, with Behaviour Interactive UK, NaturalMotion Games, Rare and Rocksteady Studios shortlisted.
• Training and Development Award: NaturalMotion Games won, ahead of Behaviour Interactive UK, Jagex: The RuneScape Company and Playground Games.

The Human Side of the Night

Jo Haslam won it. The G Into Gaming award went to Jo Haslam, currently Design Director at Snap Finger Click, whose career has taken in Mediatonic, Relentless and the BBC. Liz Prince MBE presented the award. And she didn't hold back in her praise.

"One of those rare people who leads with both empathy and action in perfect unison," Prince said, calling Haslam "an inspiring woman and a natural leader."

Six people made the HR Hero Award list. Yvonne Dawes of Frontier Developments, Tuoya Joe of HundredStar Games, Gary Martin of Jagex: The RuneScape Company, Carmen Martino of Playstack and Anna Stone of Playground Games all got named, and it's a group that shows how wide the talent runs across studios big and small. But only one took the win. Leah Wilson of IO Interactive.

Why the Pairing Works

Prince, Business Manager at Amiqus, framed the day as two halves of the same idea. It's simple. The HR Summit, she suggested, creates room for honest conversations and shared learning, the kind of space where people don't perform and where they're free to say what they've learned the hard way. And the awards then point a spotlight at the studios putting those ideas into practice.

"Bringing the industry together to both learn from each other and celebrate success helps raise standards for everyone, and we're proud to play a part in that," she said.

Playground Games had its own stake in the evening. Not just the cheque. Paul Evans, Director of HR and Recruitment at the studio, said the mid-sized winners were not just teams making brilliant games, and that stake went beyond the sponsorship money the studio had put into the night.

"These are not only teams that are creating brilliant games, but studios who are also setting the standard for what a great place to work looks like in our industry," Evans said.

What the UK Best Places to Work

Awards 2026 Actually Signal

An awards night is only as meaningful as the process behind it. And the 80/20 employee-to-company survey split is doing real work here, because it means the UK Best Places to Work Awards 2026 results reflect what staff actually experience, not what a leadership team writes in a submission document. That's the point. It's what staff feel, not what leaders write.

Whether that changes how studios hire, retain or restructure is a longer game. Still, 25 companies have a trophy. A few have several. And the industry has a fresh snapshot of who is getting workplace culture right, a picture that tells us plenty about the winners even if it doesn't yet tell us what any of it means for the way studios actually hire, retain or restructure their people over the long haul.