What's Next After Submissions?

The Bloggies' 2026 submissions are closed. Here's what's next...

Clayton Notestine

02 Feb 2026 — 3 min read

Submissions are officially closed.

Thank you for submitting so many awesome blogs and articles from across the rpg blogosphere. Like any good competition, there are more nomination-worthy posts than there are nominations. This week's whittling will be painful.

Don't forget to bookmark this year's page if you haven't already.

What's the official breakdown?

The main event, "Best Blog Post" had 765 submissions across its four major categories, Advice, Theory, Critique, and Gameable. I've tried my best to remove duplicates from the final numbers, but its imperfect. A lot of posts were submitted under different URLs, spellings, and categories.

Advice. 217 submissions (170 unique).
Theory. 262 submissions (162 unique).
Gameable. 164 submissions (131 unique).
Critique. 122 submissions (80 unique).

As you can see from the numbers, theory and advice are by far the most popular. Theory in particular gets a lot of submissions, but often repeat submissions (some posts were nominated more than 12 times!) Not surprisingly, critique—formerly called "reviews"—remains one of the least populated categories despite being expanded to more than just reviews. None of this is surprising, but it goes to show how different the categories are.

The two bonus categories were much smaller, but I'm happy to announce we have enough to host both this year. (This will be the first year for "Best Series.")

Best Debut Blog. 104 responses (70 unique).
Best Series. 94 responses (62 unique).

What does the selection process look like?

This week will be all about finalizing the nominees and "Best Blog Post" brackets. Nominees are selected on their individual merit and number of nominations. 765 submissions sounds like a lot—enough to rely on number of submissions alone—but ultimately the difference between 1 and 10 submissions is marginal when exposed to the internet. A well-timed post on Bluesky or Discord can create a lead very easily.

That's where help comes in.While the burden of selections starts and stops with me, I reached out for help. The other finalists from last year, Warren from Prismatic Wasteland, Amanda P from Weird Wonder, and Paul from Indie Game Reading Club have been my soundboard on any major decisions. They're a huge part of what kept this project fun.

If any of their work ends up in this year's competition, rest assured it happened without them knowing or with protest. The benefit of having a singular host for a silly Thunderdome-style competition is that the host gets to make final decisions and suffer the consequences.

What's next for The Bloggies?

Nominees will be revealed Monday, February 9th. This will include the brackets with 16 posts a piece, the 10 debut blogs, and the 10 series. I want to give everyone a full week to read the posts and talk about them before voting.

Voting will begin Monday, February 16th. Read the nominees in advance because we're doing all of the brackets at once. First round voting will start on Monday. The four brackets voting will be done by the end of the week.

Final Voting will begin Monday, February 23rd. On the second week, we'll vote for Best Debut Blog, Best Series, and Best Overall Blog Post across all four categories.