It's a new year, which means it's time for all us casual speedrun enjoyers to collectively gasp, "Oh, right, AGDQ starts this weekend!" Yes, folks, Awesome Games Done Quick has once again snuck up on us all, and the 2026 schedule includes some certified bangers ranging from some of the past year's best GOTY contenders to an absolutely wild-sounding Super Mario 64 relay. AGDQ 2026 officially begins at 8:30am PT / 11:30am ET / 4:30pm on Sunday, January 4 with a 30-minute kickoff show, followed by a Super Mario Sunshine any% run where player inkstar will complete the classic GameCube platformer in an estimated 1 hour and 16 minutes. As always, the event runs for a full week, concluding on Saturday, January 10 when runner adef will do a Pokemon Emerald run labeled "pick-my-main" – presumably dooming him to use an audience-voted Pokemon for the whole run. Those are the big headline runs that open and close the show, but there are dozens more reasons to tune in in-between on the official schedule. Perhaps a roughly 2-hour any% glitchless race through Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, our pick for the best game of 2025, will catch your interest? Some of 2025's other big titles are also on the list, including an "all weapons" run through Hades 2 in about 2 hours, and a 1-hour any% blast through Donkey Kong Bananza is on the docket if certain donation incentives are met. GDQ's first ever Games Done Queer event already raises over $11,000 thanks to Donkey Kong and hot dog-making speedruns, with Halo CE and Deltarune still to come Super Mario World, Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mario Kart 8, and more return to Japan's biggest speedrun event after Nintendo cited "unauthorized use" Super Mario Bros speedrun legend returns to the most competitive category after $5,000 bounty and sets 2 world records in a day: "If this isn't proof that I'm him, I don't know what is" But for me, the best parts of GDQ are those weird speedruns you can only see when the community gathers in one spot to do something truly ridiculous. Last year, that was the Crazy Taxi speedrun with a live backing band playing the soundtrack. This year, it might be the 70-star, 70-person relay through Super Mario 64, where a massive cast of runners collaborate to finish the game in under an hour and 40 minutes. Similar runs have been presented at other events in the past, but this sounds like just the kind of chaos a show like GDQ needs. Legend of Zelda speedrunner embraces pain, completes every 3D Zelda game back-to-back in under 90 hours without sleeping because Tears of the Kingdom released since they last did it.