[COLUMN] Three Days at PAX Australia 2026 | by Lachlan Williams (Patreon)

Hiya! Lachlan Williams, former editor at The Former Place, here again! After covering PAX Australia 2025 for Second Wind and all of you being so nice to me, Nick and the folks here generously acquiesced to my pestering and let me cover PAX Australia 2026. So here I am, back with all your PAX Australia 2026 coverage needs.

I always enjoy PAX Australia. Walking the showroom floor, seeing all the excited faces, the passionate cosplays, the happy families — there’s just something about PAX Australia. I’ve been to plenty of other cons, but there’s an energy around the show that isn’t present in any other. It’s indescribable. Which, as someone whose job it is to describe things, is a little vexing. It’s one of those things you just have to experience for yourself. It’s vibes.

So with my own inadequacies out of the way, here’s what was on the floor this year.

Nintendo had the largest booth with wall-to-wall Switches, but the only new game they were showing was Switch Sports Resort. You could get a nifty Ocarina of Time keychain though, identical to the EU region preorder bonus.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and World of Warcraft Forever also had booth space, offering hands-on gameplay demos. There was also Ace Combat 8, which is already out, but I just love talking about it.

Sega’s booth had Persona 4 Revival, Stranger Than Heaven, Total War: Warhammer 40k, and Alien: Isolation 2 demos. I played Alien: Isolation 2. It’s the same slice of gameplay as seen in previews all the way back in June, but this was the same updated build that was at Gamescom. I’m a bit sick of the stalker horror genre, so Alien: Isolation 2 didn’t really grab me, but it’s more of the first game, so if you loved that, you’ll probably like this one too.

PAX indies are always the best part of the show, and this year there were plenty of great games of varying genres and interests in the lineup. I can’t cover them all, but here are a handful that stood out to me, all with demos you can try out for yourself:

Lorrenz Fries is a creepy top-down horror game about some kids uncovering the dark mysteries of their school.

Rain98 is a lo-fi point-and-click-like puzzle visual novel about a melancholy girl in 1990s Tokyo and the end of the world.

HellHeart Breaker is a top-down roguelite action game with a dating hook set in an Asian-inspired underworld.

Kardaviik is a 3D voxel factory building game set in a procedurally generated asteroid belt.

If you want more coverage of the indies on show, scroll down to the third-last paragraph for links to very comprehensive interviews and write-ups by some of my colleagues.

Alongside the video games, there were also plenty of tabletop experiences to be had. One half of the show is always dedicated to tabletop, whether that’s play or purchase of games or accessories. And Pokémon cards.

This year, PAX moved the classic and retro game segments off the main floor and into a room in the upper annex. While it was a little out of the way, giving a dedicated room to old consoles and pinball machines felt really cozy and concentrated, and it was always full of people.

There were of course plenty of vendors selling clothes and enamel pins and desktop knick-knacks and sculptures and comic books. I picked up some Evangelion and Hatsune Miku merch that I’ll never use, but they looked cool and I wanted it, so what’re you gonna do?

Hardware vendors also had a prominent presence, with Australian PC vendor MWAVE, PC builder Aftershock, and keyboard manufacturer Keychron among the booths selling or promoting gear.

A bit of an odd one was Lexus, who had one of only 200 (and only nine in Australia) Lexus RZ 600e F Sport Performance cars actually on the show floor. The car just sat there, but the booth had two Assetto Corsa EVO racing sim rigs mocked up like the interior of the car.

There were a bunch of cool panels and special guests in attendance as usual. Mick Gordon talked about his work in music composition, and Koji Fox and Foxclon were there for FFXIV. Ify Nwadiwe performed in some live shows. A friend of mine is super into wrestling — a subject I have no knowledge or interest in — and she was most excited for Austin Creed/Xavier Woods’ fireside chat, where he talked about playing games during his childhood and his passion for collecting retro consoles.

Personally, I was looking forward to author Isobelle Carmody’s talk the most. The Obernewtyn Chronicles were formative reads to me as a weird nerdy kid, and it was great as a writer (lol) and editor (lolol) to hear about her writing processes and philosophy. From how her teacher talking about the Manhattan Project and Hiroshima inspired Obernewtyn, and her stance against AI as "the arts are human beings processing being human,” to the importance of finding a tough editor and how editing should “hurt a bit” and how writers should hide from their editors to avoid deadlines…

Uhh…

This year, I tried something different and was actually on a panel myself. It was Let’s Play the Unofficial Highlander 2: The Quickening Roleplaying Game, where we played the Unofficial Highlander 2: The Quickening Roleplaying Game by Adam ”Rutskarn” Decamp. GM’d by Fergus Halliday and with Ellen Graham, Zac Naoum, Naomi “Nom” Jackson, and myself as players, we orchestrated a fight between Conner MacLeod, George H. W. Bush, and *NSYNC. It was weird, but we had fun, and that’s what matters.

One of my favourite things about PAX is meeting all my media industry colleagues. In a tough few years for games media, I thought I’d share their great work this year. First up is Nom and the team from Sifter, who did some great interviews with a bunch of indies. Another fantastic, comprehensive roundup of playable indie game demos and a top 10 was done by Renee O’Flynn at Qualbert. Jamie Galea at New Game Plus TV gets a shoutout for his lowkey but important work for knowing everyone and helping other media people out. A special mention goes to Mark Serrels and Jackson Ryan, who were roaming around the show with the first volume of their brand new, crowdfunded, physical video game criticism magazine CONTINUE?. More informally, I really enjoyed catching up with and talking Ace Combat 8 with Lance, Bubbell, and Cody.

PAX Australia is the highlight of my calendar. It gives me a chance to refocus on the industry — globally and locally — and to reconnect with people in the media, some of whom I’ve known for over a decade. On a personal level, it’s been a tough year, and that weekend in Melbourne gave me the chance to catch my breath and remember my passion for an industry on fire.

Video games are good. PAX Australia 2026, thank you for reminding me.