The 2026 Epic AI MegaJam runs November 12–15. Team up with up to four other humans and as many AI agents as you want to build a playable game in Unreal Engine or UEFN.
Use any AI tools you like, and connect your agents to the editor with Unreal MCP.
Kickoff and theme reveal:November 11, 2026 7:00 PM on:
Prizes: cash prizes, plus development continuation grants for standout entries
Jam your way: online, with your local game dev community, or in person at Digital Jungle in San Francisco (November 14–15), alongside teams from Anthropic, Google, Meshy, OpenAI, SpaceXSI, and more.
Can I start before November 12?
You can set up your tools, agents, and MCP ahead of time, but don’t start building your game until November 12. Declare any prompts, scripts, or assets you made before the jam.
Can my team enter with both Unreal Engine and UEFN?
No. Each team picks one and follows that submission process.
Do I need to come to San Francisco?
No. Online and in-person entries are judged the same way.
Can I keep working on my game after the jam?
Yes. Keep the jam version as your submitted build. Standout Unreal Engine and UEFN entries can also receive Development Continuation Grants of up to $50,000 to keep developing their game.
I don’t know if this is coming from the top, or if you’ve had a change in social media / marketing direction recently, but this is utterly tone deaf.
First you completely fell on your face with your vibe coded redesign of the launcher - that’s somehow worse and more buggy than the current one.. and now this crap? are you serious?
Even the announcement image had a hand with 6 fingers. What a joke.
You’re spitting into the face of every creative and you’re actively destroying the trust of a whole community that has supported you for more than a decade. Have you learned nothing from the Unity debacles?
Shove the AI crap up your a.. (AI hearts here) ! I have been using UEd since 2003 and all you do since 2021 is fok it up! stop that!
Dont abandon Blueprints or I abondon UEd!
What drugs are the chinese investors feeding to Tim Sweeny so that he make such horrible decisions?
I feel like it is important to note that the regular employees at Epic have literally zero control over this type of policy coming down from on high, so while it is good to share feedback and constructive criticism, I don’t think it’s fair to be rude to the Epic staff who are just dealing with the fallout of these decisions like the rest of us.
There are a LOT of people on the Fortnite side of things who are also sick and tired of AI slop. Epic has even repeatedly put AI slop games into their “Epic’s Picks” tab of Fortnite’s Discover section. There are SO many examples that I’m not even gonna bother to put them all here (but I will say, most of them are just copy/paste versions of existing game genres but with AI imagery)
A lot of us, myself included, hate seeing them promote AI this aggressively, especially in front of a bunch of creatives (again, myself included). And with how hard it is for small creators to get seen in the first place, it’s just a slap in the face.
It’s not just annoying — it’s shameful, unnecessary, and not thought through well!
An idea the judges will love. Test it against their own criteria before you spend a single hour building. Speed. Planner, coder, QA and level specialists work in your UEFN project, so you ship more polish in the same 4 days. A clean hand-in. Rules checked, story ready, nothing left to chance on deadline day.
Last year, there was a ban on AI. Now it’s the headline. I chuckled a bit at the notion of no named sponsors this time around, at least for the awards.
Since Unreal Engine license prohibits use which could end up providing the source as an input for an LLM, wouldn’t using a non-local AI solution provide training data for the providers themselves? Assuming they haven’t ingested the code already without asking, which I’m very sure they haven’t already done.
Not that I’m serious. The world isn’t serious. Let’s put smiles on our faces. Happy jamming. Or vibing. May the best agent win.
While i totally get the lash back and negativity around AI in these posts, you have to understand Epic sees where the industry is going and rather than fight a losing battle, have decided to try and be at the forefront which makes sense if they are going to survive in a growing market of AI game generation tools.
Its like every other new technology ever that had lash back, eventually it takes over and like it or not eventually becomes the norm. Get with the times or get left behind. In the future, studios not using AI will be a novelty and marketing pitch.
It’s just an assumption that AI will win in the end. We don’t know yet. If consumers reject it and or the AI bubble bursts, then what? It would look kind of silly to go all in on the AI train, just for it to end up being another tech fad that came and left
)
Looking for a team for the jam? Here it is.
An idea the judges will love. Test it against their own criteria before you spend a single hour building.
Speed. Planner, coder, QA and level specialists work in your UEFN project, so you ship more polish in the same 4 days.
A clean hand-in. Rules checked, story ready, nothing left to chance on deadline day.