"The mission of XP Gaming is to connect the video game industry," said Jason Lepine, founder of XP Gaming, in his opening remarks to kick off the conference in Toronto XP Game Summit 2026 on May 21, 2026. The summit celebrates its fifth year running with the 2026 event, seemingly well on its way to achieving its mission with over 700 attendees at this year's Toronto event, but it's not focused on just one annual event in one major city. The Toronto conference is one of four events, as Lepine has a clear vision for what the future of B2B events in the video game industry looks like. Spoiler alert: it's not another 30 years of GDC.
As this was my first time attending XP Game Summit in Toronto, it was exciting to leap into this conference, particularly since it also tied into the Canadian Game Awards 2026, which were hosted on the evening of the first day of XP Game Summit. I participated in the CGAs as a judge this year, after simply attending the show last year. This year's show was much bigger than last year, and it's great to see something like it grow as much as it did, in my own backyard.
Having something 'in your own backyard' was also part of the driving force for Lepine, who used that exact phrase when he was telling me about what it means for XP Game Summit to reach its fifth anniversary.
After attending the conference and speaking to Lepine, as someone born and raised in Toronto, I'm grateful to see an event like this continuing to grow here, and it also presents an interesting case for the future of these kinds of conferences in the video game industry.
In Your Own Backyard, In The Nick of Time
"Five years means we've ironed out the kinks, I think. We've shown that there is a sustainable model for this kind of conference and that there's this kind of appetite for the community to get together in Canada," Lepine begins when I asked him about what the milestone means. "And there's five years of XP Game Summit, which is our Toronto show, but then there's five years of everything we've done. So if I talk five years of XP Gaming that's one thing, if I talk five years of XP Game Summit that's something else."
"XP Game Summit was really born out of my desire to have something in my backyard. I live in Toronto, I didn't necessarily want to fly across the continent to go to other conferences, and I felt like there was enough of an industry here that, 'why can't we have this in our backyard?' So that's what I kind of naively set out with."
Starting with a few hundred attendees in its first year, Lepine and his team have grown the event to its current polished state, with core elements like its exhibit of indie games and program of speakers still around from its initial iteration, while others like a 'speed dating' element were tossed to the side with the benefit of hindsight.
Again, this was my first time at XP Game Summit, but at least for my experience, it was a very well-run event that appeared to me as a smaller-scale version of conferences like GDC. Though it may not yet have the kind of international recognition of GDC, Lepine tells me how "heartwarming" it is for him to have folks from around the world tell him they've heard of XP Game Summit.
Though the actual number of international attendees for XP Game Summit is still growing (only about 10% of this year's attendees were international), it was not surprising to hear that the show had begun to garner more appeal around the world. GDC 2026 saw a 30% decline in attendance this year, as more and more developers from Canada and elsewhere are not just weighing up the cost of travelling to an expensive city like San Francisco, but expressing a desire to turn away from events hosted in the United States. As a Canadian, I know that anecdotally within my own circles, there's a heavy desire to avoid travel to the US for any reason unless absolutely required.
While the current geopolitical climate between the US and Canada has certainly accelerated a desire to avoid the US, Lepine says he saw this trend before the COVID-19 pandemic. "The geopolitical climate, as you said, has more Canadians reflecting on their travel plans and where they go. Having the opportunity to stay in Canada and continue their business is something that a lot of our industry members just couldn't even dream of."
"Sure, we had MIGs, the Montreal International Game Summit for the last 20+ years in Canada, [but] that was the one show. Now that we have four shows across Canada that we do, it just creates more opportunities. Not everyone can attend the show, whether for geographic purposes, financial purposes, or timing purposes, so more options is always better," he continues.
The fact that Lepine noticed an opportunity to develop a B2B games industry conference in Canada, which would ultimately be developed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and was ready to go as lockdowns around the world lifted, is what he believes to be the little bit of luck XP Gaming required for its success. "There's always a factor of luck in business."
A B2B Conference for a New World
When I walked into XP Game Summit, as I said before, it was what I imagined GDC would look like on a smaller scale. I've never been to GDC, and while I'm not sure I'll ever get that chance, it would've made sense to me if Lepine and his team were working towards building something like GDC here in Toronto or across any of XP Gaming's events which take place in Halifax (XP Game Connect Atlantic), the aforementioned Montreal-based MIGs, and XP Game Connect Vancouver.
That's not at all the plan, however, and it's very much by choice. "GDC was born out of a different world. It's over 30 years old, the world was very different, and how business was done was very different. It's a massive show, and there's a place in the world for those massive shows, but I'm not hearing anybody asking for more massive shows. What I'm hearing is [for] more opportunities to connect intimately, and the small to mid-size format show is where I'm seeing guests gravitate towards."
"Right now around the world, there's over 300 B2B game conferences, all over the world, and most of them range from maybe 200-300 people to 3,000, and that seems to be the sweet spot. Maybe in my early days, I wanted it to be 'bigger and better,' I realized that bigger is not necessarily better, and none of my attendees are asking for bigger. I think there's enough content here that's actually difficult to consume in two days, and just having more crowds adds more noise. So we want to maintain that intentional focus of connecting the industry for success. It's our mission, it's what we focus on, and creating those opportunities for connection in a place like this is just very efficient in my opinion."
Smaller, more concentrated events across the country, hosted on both coasts with a couple somewhere in the middle, is clearly working for XP Gaming as it celebrates another successful year. Though, as Lepine puts it, there's still plenty of space for the kinds of massive shows like GDC and Gamescom, though the latter also includes a large consumer focus.
Of course, the real test for XP Gaming's approach will be the longevity of its events. Five years is already an impressive milestone, particularly as Lepine notes that the structure grew through an incredibly tumultuous time in the video game industry, one that hasn't particularly slowed down four years after the inaugural event. But its intimate nature and the intentional focus towards that style of event have clearly resonated with video game industry professionals in Canada and across the globe. Making this year's theme of resonance and the strength that comes from a collection of different people working together towards a common goal while embracing, not just blending their differences, even more fitting.
An Indie Floor of Vets and Newbies
After hearing opening remarks from Lepine, Entertainment Software Association of Canada president Paul Fogolin, president of Interactive Ontairio, Lucie Lalumière, and Ontario's minister of tourism, culture, and gaming, Stan Cho, and speaking to Lepine, I turned down the hall towards the show floor.
Though I've never been to XP Game Summit before, I'm well accustomed to a show floor of indie games thanks to the reliable stream of local video game industry events that happen in Toronto. Walking through, I saw plenty of games I recognized, like Cococucumber's recently released Echo Generation 2 and the upcoming Soulslike Blighted from Guacamelee series developer Drinkbox Studios, two of the more impressive games on the floor for my money.
There were also games I recognized from local indie events that I've been seeing grow in the last few years. Titles like an incredibly charming co-op game called Marco Polo (which you can currently play on itch.io) and Retroronto, a pixel art life sim game about trying to live and survive in the city, which can also be found on itch.io.
While the show floor was mostly indie studios showing off their projects, with almost everyone I spoke to mentioning how they're struggling to find a publishing partner, there were a few other kinds of booths. A personal standout was ELO, gaming hardware company that is currently developing a pair of XR glasses that I got to see and handle for a moment at their booth.
I was a bit nervous to do so, admittedly, particularly after ELO chief executive officer Adam Hepburn explained that the glasses they had for demo purposes were one of two prototypes that cost hundreds of thousands to develop. But as someone who has found himself using his VR headset partly as a way to just play flat-screen games in a more intimate way, XR glasses like ELO's upcoming Sentinel XR's are quite intriguing to me, and something I'll hopefully have a chance to follow up on when they're closer to release.
Transformation and the Hope for the Next Wave
"It was probably the worst time for the video game industry" is how Lepine described the period within which he started to build what would become XP Gaming. Studios had fewer people and less funds to send team members to shows, to sign on as sponsors, and to do the kinds of things that help shows like XP Game Summit survive.
And yet, five years later, XP Gaming is celebrating milestones and finding that its vision for B2B conferences that offered more options than restrictions is working. Its goal of "connecting the industry for success" has clearly, so far, gone both ways between XP Gaming and the rest of the industry. Yes, the hardships and struggles the industry is facing cannot be ignored, but you can't focus on the negative all the time.
We can't know if XP Gaming will make it the next five years, or if its approach of smaller and more spread out events catches on, and we start seeing more B2B conferences outside of the United States grow in significance and popularity across the industry. But the video game industry is constantly changing, and who knows what could be on the other side of it.
"We can't ignore the negative news that it's a more competitive market than ever, that there's been unprecedented layoffs of the last few years; what I'm seeing is, that negativity is starting to slow down, and we're hearing more positivity come out of the industry," Lepine says.
"We're hearing that the old way of making games with $100 million budgets and seven, ten-year timelines is not feasible anymore for anyone. So we're seeing successes come from teams that are smaller, leaner, that the budgets for these games are a lot smaller than traditional AAA budgets. So I think there's still a lot of room for niche games that are AA or indie AA, and what we're seeing right now is that transformation. These large teams are scaling down, some are going to leave the industry forever and others are going to spin-up their own studio or find themselves with a smaller studio."
"That's where I see a lot of hope and the next wave. It's a transformation that's happening right now, and through transformation there's always losses, but there's also wins, so I think it's important to keep that in perspective. While there is a lot of doom and gloom, at the end of the day, humans and people have always loved playing, whatever it is. Video games will always be a medium of play that people enjoy, there will always be a demand for video games. It's an industry that's here to stay for many years to come."
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
