Watch Gamescom Opening Night Live

By Garrett Martin | August 19, 2025 | 10:22am

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Gamescom, the massive games industry show that takes over Cologne, Germany, every year, officially kicks off tomorrow. As is standard with these kinds of big events, that means today is focused on a show-opening press conference that promises to reveal new games and announce release dates and just generally dump a lot of news out on the ground for everybody in the gamesphere to pick through like chickens pecking for a kernel.

If you’re not in Germany and want to watch Gamescom Opening Night Live, uh, live, then you’re covered: this is one of the increasingly rarer times when you can be happy the internet exists. The whole show is streaming live on Gamescom’s YouTube channel and Twitch channel, starting at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT today. If you aren’t American, well, first off, congratulations, and secondly, the show’s at 8 p.m. CEST, which is Cologne’s local time. Just do the math to figure out when it’s streaming for you.

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A number of big games coming out later this year and into 2026 are already confirmed to have some kind of presence at this year’s kickoff show. Expect to learn more about the new Call of Duty: Black Ops game (they’ve made seven of these things?!?), Resident Evil: Requiem, Ghost of Yotei, Silent Hill f, and more. There’s also going to be a little sneak peek at the next season of the Fallout TV show, which comes out in December. Will Walton Goggins’ Ghoul totally take it over like a modern-day Fonz, now that the Goggz has blown up into a legit mainstream pop culture phenomenon? I guess we’ll just have to wait ’til December to find out.

Expect some surprises at Opening Night Live, too. And maybe celebrities? I don’t know, it’s Cologne, if I was in charge of this show I would definitely shoehorn in some kind of Can tribute, like a slumming symphony playing “Yoo Doo Right” over the new World of Warcraft trailer, or something like that. Shit, if that happens, I’d actually watch this thing.

And speaking of watching, you can do that at the YouTube and Twitch channels listed above, or hey, right here, in the embedded window below. The show starts at 2 p.m. ET, with a preshow at 1:30 p.m.