Beautiful Plants For Your Interior
At gamescom 2026, NetEase’s open-world wuxia title Where Winds Meet took home the Best Mobile Game award, marking the third consecutive year that a Chinese-developed game has won the category.
But the significance of this year’s result goes far beyond the winner itself.
For the first time, all five nominees for Best Mobile Game came from Chinese developers or publishers:
- Arknights: Endfield — Hypergryph
- Genshin Impact — HoYoverse
- Silver Palace — Leiting Games
- Where Winds Meet — NetEase
- Zenless Zone Zero — HoYoverse
Ultimately, Where Winds Meet emerged as the winner.
Looking at the past three years, an even clearer pattern emerges:
2024 — Genshin Impact
2025 — Love and Deepspace
2026 — Where Winds Meet
Three consecutive Best Mobile Game winners from China.
And in 2026, Chinese developers went one step further by occupying all five nomination slots.
Three Consecutive Wins: Chinese Games Are Building a New Track Record at gamescom
The Best Mobile Game award at gamescom has been dominated by Chinese titles for three consecutive years.
| Year | Best Mobile Game | Developer / Publisher | Key Characteristics |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Genshin Impact | HoYoverse | Open world, anime-inspired, global IP |
| 2025 | Love and Deepspace | Papergames / Infold Games | Female-oriented, 3D romance, global operation |
| 2026 | Where Winds Meet | Everstone Studio / NetEase Games | Open world, wuxia, Chinese cultural themes |
The significance of Genshin Impact in 2024 was clear: it demonstrated that a Chinese-developed mobile game could compete directly with the world’s biggest premium gaming products.
Its combination of open-world exploration, high-end 3D production, cross-platform development and synchronized global operations helped redefine expectations for what a mobile game could be.
In 2025, Love and Deepspace took the award in a very different direction.
Rather than relying on the traditional action-RPG or anime-oriented formula, the title demonstrated the global potential of the female-oriented gaming market.
Then came Where Winds Meet in 2026.
Its success represents yet another shift: Chinese cultural identity itself is becoming a competitive advantage in global games.
Three years, three very different games.
That diversity may be more significant than the three consecutive wins themselves.
Love and Deepspace — Expanding Beyond the Traditional Export Formula
The success of Love and Deepspace demonstrated something equally important.
Chinese games could succeed internationally without relying primarily on male players, anime-style action RPGs or traditional RPG mechanics.
The global market for female-oriented games could also become a major opportunity for Chinese developers.
In that sense, the 2025 award represented the expansion of the Chinese industry’s global product portfolio.
Chinese Games Are Moving Beyond the “Anime Games” Label
For much of the past decade, Chinese games became particularly visible overseas through anime-inspired titles.
Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero helped establish the global reputation of Chinese developers for producing high-quality anime-style games.
But the 2026 gamescom results suggest that this description is becoming increasingly incomplete.
The five nominees represent a much broader range of product directions:
anime-inspired RPGs, open-world games, wuxia, female-oriented games and strategy RPGs.
The significance of Where Winds Meet is particularly clear.
It demonstrates that Chinese developers do not necessarily need to adopt a standardized “international” aesthetic in order to succeed abroad.
Instead, distinctive Chinese cultural elements can themselves become a source of differentiation.