Steam Next Fest Results: What Developers Actually Earn

The median game in February 2026’s Steam Next Fest gained 806 wishlists, according to Chris Zukowski’s post-fest developer survey published April 13, 2026, and GameDiscoverCo’s estimate across all 3,500-plus demos in that edition puts the true median nearer 200. Those two numbers, not the screenshots of five-figure spikes you see on social media, are what your own result should be graded against.

Key facts

• •Median wishlists gained in February 2026: 806 on Zukowski’s post-fest survey (April 2026, self-reported), down from 1,079 a year earlier. GameDiscoverCo’s estimate across every demo in the fest is nearer 200, because the developers who answer a post-fest survey are the ones who marketed hardest.
• •Zukowski’s Next Fest benchmark tiers: Bronze 0-999 wishlists earned, Silver 1,000-6,999, Gold 7,000-9,999, Diamond 10,000+.
• •What you earn scales with what you brought: median gains were 322 for games entering with 0-999 wishlists and 5,215 for games entering with 10,000-99,999 (same survey, February 2026 data).
• •The field keeps growing. GameDiscoverCo counted 3,500+ demos in February 2026, up 19% on October 2025, and 4,382 in June 2026, up 66% year on year.
• •Most pre-launch pages are not ready for any of this: of 286 unreleased Steam pages we captured between March 7 and August 18, 2026, only 110 (38.5%) listed a demo at all and just 70 (24.5%) cleared four basic pre-fest bars at once (our demo study, September 8, 2026).

What follows is how to read your own numbers against those benchmarks, and what separates the developers who walk away with a full wishlist from those who barely move the needle.

Next Fest isn’t just a marketing event. It’s a diagnostic tool. Your demo downloads, wishlist gains, and conversion rates during the fest tell you something critical: whether your game, your store page, and your marketing are working together or fighting each other.

If you skip the analysis and just move on, you’re throwing away free data. Your Next Fest results can tell you whether your capsule image is compelling enough to stop a scroll, whether your demo hooks players or loses them, and whether your store page converts browsers into wishlisters. That data directly informs every decision you make between the fest and your launch. Developers who treat Next Fest as a test run - and actually study the results - consistently outperform those who treat it as a one-and-done marketing push.

Before you spiral about your numbers, establish what the measured ranges are. An earlier version of this post printed demo-download and wishlist ranges that had no source behind them, and the wishlist median it quoted was about five times the real one. Those are gone. Everything below is somebody’s published measurement, with the sample and the date attached.

Wishlist gains

The only recurring measurement of this is Chris Zukowski’s post-fest developer survey. For February 2026 it put the median at 806 wishlists gained, with the 30th percentile at 382, the 70th at 1,839 and the 95th at 13,461. A year earlier the median was 1,079, so the trend across two editions is downward while demo counts climb.

That survey is self-reported and self-selecting. GameDiscoverCo, working from the whole field rather than from respondents, estimates the true median across all 3,500-plus February 2026 demos at nearer 200 wishlists. Both numbers are useful, for different questions: the 806 tells you how you did against developers who marketed their fest, the ~200 tells you how you did against everyone who entered one.

Wishlist gains by what you brought in

The single strongest predictor in the survey data is your pre-fest wishlist count, which is another way of saying Next Fest amplifies an audience rather than creating one:

Demo downloads and demo-to-wishlist conversion

I have no sourced benchmark for either, and neither does anyone else I can find. Valve does not publish demo download counts, no survey collects them at scale, and the demo-to-wishlist conversion rates that circulate in developer threads are individual anecdotes. If you see a range quoted for these, ask what the sample was. Your own download and wishlist figures are still worth pulling from Steamworks, because the ratio between them across your own fest is a real signal about your demo even when there is nothing to compare it against.

If you haven’t built your demo yet or want to gut-check your preparation, our Next Fest Prep Tool can help you plan and track everything.

Use Zukowski’s published tiers rather than a scale of your own, so your result is comparable with somebody else’s: Bronze 0-999 wishlists earned, Silver 1,000-6,999, Gold 7,000-9,999, Diamond 10,000+. Note where the February 2026 median of 806 lands: the median fest is a Bronze fest, and the median entry across all demos, at nearer 200, is deep in it.

Diamond and Gold: 7,000+ wishlists from a single fest

The survey data is blunt about what these games have in common, and it is not a secret technique. Median gains ran 5,215 for games entering the fest with 10,000-99,999 wishlists and 12,882 for those entering with 100,000+, against 322 for games entering with under 1,000. An audience compounding into a fest is the mechanism; everything else is second-order.

That said, the page work is what converts the traffic Valve hands you. Games in this tier arrive with a capsule that reads at thumbnail size, screenshots showing actual gameplay with real variety, and a short description that names the genre in the first clause. They didn’t show up hoping the page would “be fine.” Run yours through the Capsule Validator before the fest, not after.

Silver: 1,000-6,999 wishlists

This is the band above the median, and it is where a well-prepared indie with a modest existing audience tends to land. These developers did most things right but had one or two areas holding them back: a capsule that was decent but didn’t pop against the fest browse grid, a demo that ran long enough to lose players before the wishlist prompt, or a page that was still being finished during fest week.

The good news for this band: these are all fixable problems, and since each game gets only one fest, they are worth fixing before yours rather than after. The capsule design guide is a good starting point for the visual side, and our Next Fest checklist covers the operational preparation.

Bronze: under 1,000 wishlists

This band is painful and it is also the median, which is the single most useful thing to know before you enter a fest. The recurring causes below are patterns I see in postmortems and in the pages developers send us, not measurements, so treat them as a diagnostic checklist rather than a ranking.

The most common issue was a weak capsule image. In a fest with hundreds of games, your capsule is doing the first and most important job: stopping someone mid-scroll. Games with generic, hard-to-read, or visually muddy capsules simply didn’t get clicked. Several developers in this tier told me they made their capsule the week before the fest and never tested it at small sizes. That’s a fixable mistake, but it cost them dearly.

Second, demo quality issues. Crashes, confusing onboarding, or a demo that just didn’t represent the game’s best moments. Some developers put their tutorial as the demo, which is often the least exciting part of the game. Players have hundreds of demos to try during the fest - if yours doesn’t hook them in the first five minutes, they move on.

Third, no pre-existing audience and no external marketing push. The developers who showed up to Next Fest with no Discord, no social media following, and no outreach to press or content creators were essentially relying on Steam’s organic discovery alone. That can work if your capsule and genre are strong, but it’s a much harder path.

Fourth, genre mismatch. Some genres simply perform better in the Next Fest environment than others. Action games, roguelikes, and horror games tend to get more attention because they demo well and generate shareable moments. Slower-paced strategy games or narrative experiences can still do well, but they need stronger store page marketing to compensate for less inherently viral gameplay.

Here’s the question everyone really wants answered: if you gain a bunch of wishlists during Next Fest, how many of those actually turn into sales?

The canonical figure is that the median game converts about 12% of its total wishlist balance into sales on day one, with the first week typically landing near 20%. There is no published figure for Next Fest wishlists specifically, and an earlier version of this post printed one anyway. It is gone. The honest position is that fest wishlists sit at or below the general median, because a fest wishlist is often somebody who browsed a demo for twenty minutes during a week when they were browsing hundreds. The full dataset is in our wishlist conversion rates guide.

Timing is the lever you control. If you launch within 1-3 months of your Next Fest, those wishlists are still fresh: the player remembers your game and the demo is still in recent memory. If you launch 6+ months after the fest, expect conversion to drop. Wishlists decay, not technically but practically, as players forget or get distracted by the hundred other games they wishlisted. I cannot put a multiple on that decay from any source I trust, so plan around compressing the gap rather than around a number.

This has a practical implication for your release planning: if possible, schedule your Next Fest participation 1-3 months before your planned launch. That window maximizes the conversion value of every wishlist you gain during the event - our guide on what to do after Steam Next Fest walks through how to spend those post-fest weeks so the momentum carries into launch.

First, don’t panic. A bad Next Fest is not a death sentence for your game. It’s a signal that something needs to change before launch, and you now have specific data to guide those changes.

Audit your capsule image

If your demo download numbers were low relative to your game’s impressions during the fest, your capsule is likely the bottleneck. It’s the first thing players see, and if it doesn’t grab attention, nothing else matters. Run it through our Capsule Validator, study the capsule design guide, and look at what top-performing games in your genre are doing. Test multiple versions at thumbnail size. Ask people who don’t know your game what they think it is just from the capsule.

Rework your demo

If downloads were reasonable but few of those players wishlisted, the demo itself needs work. Ask yourself honestly: does the demo show the most exciting part of your game, or just the beginning? Is it too long? Does it end with a clear wishlist prompt? Did testers report bugs or confusion? Get fresh eyes on it. Watch someone play your demo who’s never seen the game before. Their experience will tell you what needs to change.

Build an audience before launch

If your visibility was the core issue, start building your audience now. Post devlog updates consistently, engage in communities where your target players hang out, reach out to small content creators who cover your genre, and build a Discord. You don’t need a massive following - even a few hundred engaged fans can create the early momentum that Steam’s algorithm amplifies.

Fold the lessons into your launch, not a rerun

Per the Steamworks Next Fest documentation, each title may participate in one Next Fest, ever - there is no second attempt with the same game. That makes the diagnostic work above more valuable, not less: the capsule, demo, and audience fixes the fest exposed go straight into your launch marketing, where the same weaknesses would cost you far more. And when you enter a fest with your next title, arrive with those lessons already applied - a tested capsule, a tight demo, and a seeded audience are what separate the tiers in every dataset we have.

If you have Next Fest data from a previous game’s participation, use it to set specific targets for your next title’s fest - for most developers reading this, that means the October 2026 Next Fest, which has its own registration and demo deadlines to work backward from. Here’s a framework.

Pre-fest wishlist count: this is the one target with data behind it. Zukowski’s February 2026 survey puts median gains at 322 wishlists for games entering with under 1,000 and 1,006 for games entering with 1,000-9,999, so crossing 1,000 before the fest opens is worth more than anything you can do during it. Spend the weeks before the fest building wishlists through your own channels.

Demo downloads and demo-to-wishlist ratio: track both from your own Steamworks reports, and compare them only against your own numbers. No published benchmark exists for either, so a target lifted from a forum thread is a target invented by somebody.

Store page readiness: this one is measurable in advance. Of 286 unreleased pages we captured to August 18, 2026, only 70 (24.5%) had a demo, a video, at least five screenshots, and a release date more specific than “coming soon” at the same time. Clearing those four bars before you register puts you in the top quarter of the population the fest recruits from.

Livestreaming: stream if you can, but I have no source for how much it is worth and neither does anyone quoting an hours target. Treat it as a way to reach your own community during the week, not as a lever with a known return.

Track all of these metrics, compare them against the benchmarks in this post, and identify your biggest gap. Fixing your weakest area will almost always yield a bigger improvement than polishing your strongest.

Is 3,000 wishlists from Next Fest a good result?

It is well above average. Chris Zukowski’s February 2026 post-fest survey put the median at 806 wishlists gained, and GameDiscoverCo’s estimate across all 3,500-plus demos in that edition is nearer 200. On Zukowski’s tiers, 3,000 is a Silver result, above the median and below the 7,000 Gold line. Check our Next Fest checklist for a full preparation breakdown.

How important is genre for Next Fest success?

Genre matters, but it’s not destiny. Action games, roguelikes, and horror games naturally demo well and tend to see higher download numbers. But we’ve seen strategy games, farming sims, and narrative adventures break into the strong performer tier by having exceptional capsule images and polished demos. If your genre isn’t inherently flashy, compensate with a store page that immediately communicates what makes your game compelling. The capsule design guide covers how to make any genre stand out visually.

Should I delay my launch if my Next Fest results were weak?

Possibly. If your Next Fest results revealed that your store page isn’t converting or your demo has quality issues, launching immediately would mean launching with those same problems. A delay of 2-3 months to fix the specific issues the fest exposed is often worth it. Use that time to overhaul your capsule, rework your demo, and build more wishlists. The wishlist conversion rates data shows that launching with more recent wishlists converts better anyway.

Can a strong Next Fest make up for a small pre-existing audience?

Partly, and the survey data says be realistic about how much. Games entering February 2026’s fest with under 1,000 wishlists gained a median of 322; games entering with 10,000-99,999 gained a median of 5,215. Steam does hand you organic visibility you would never get on your own, and breakout results from small starting points do happen every edition, but the central tendency is that the fest multiplies an audience rather than manufacturing one. A great store page and a great demo are what convert the visibility you are given. Use the Next Fest Prep Tool to make sure you’re not leaving anything on the table.

Ready to prepare for your next fest? Start with the Next Fest Prep Tool for a live countdown and task tracker, and run through our complete Steam Next Fest checklist to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. If your capsule needs work, run it through the Capsule Validator and read the capsule design guide. For a full store page audit, use the Steam Page Analyzer to catch issues before the fest starts.

Browse our genre-specific optimization guides for strategies tailored to your game type, and check the Steam Page Leaderboard to see how top games optimize their store pages.