gamescom 2026 had more hardware than I expected. Monitors, handhelds, and storage drives kept showing up in the announcements I was covering, sometimes right between the game reveals. IFA 2026 and Apple’s September event are already getting closer, but Cologne still has my attention. I hope yours, too, because I’m about to take you through the best of gamescom 2026.

Component costs are climbing, and every brand seemed determined to justify the numbers on the tag. Newzoo puts the global games market at $213.9 billion, up 6.1% year on year, so there’s no shortage of money chasing player attention. My picks below lean toward gear, because that’s where the arguments were most interesting, with a few games at the end.

1. Best of show: ASUS ROG XBOX Ally X20

ASUS brought its 20th anniversary handheld to Cologne, but the screen is what caught my attention. The ROG XBOX Ally X20 has a 7.4-inch 120 Hz OLED Nebula HDR display with up to 1,400 nits of peak brightness. The translucent body gets black and gold accents, while TMR joysticks, a transforming D-pad, and rubberized grips handle the controls.

At $1,299, the X20 costs $300 more than the standard model, and my first reaction was that ASUS had lost the plot. Then I compared it against what any OLED handheld costs. 

For players who game away from a desk more often than at one, the X20 is the most complete Windows handheld from the show, provided you accept that the Ryzen Z2 AI Extreme silicon inside hasn’t moved.

2. Best esports monitor: ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace

ASUS ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace

Competitive players have relied on 24.5-inch TN monitors for years. The ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace takes a very different approach with a Tandem WOLED panel and a 720 Hz refresh rate. ASUS rates its gray-to-gray response time at 0.02ms, while HDR highlights can reach 1,700 nits. Dolby Vision is supported as well.

Resolution stays at Full HD, so the image won’t look as crisp as you might expect from a modern gaming monitor. Move it to another desk, and the built-in position sensor can show its previous tilt and height on screen. You can use that as a quick reference when setting up the monitor again.

A tripod socket sits on the monitor too, giving streamers a place to mount their gear. PGL has picked it as the official display for the 2026 Major.

3. Best living room upgrade: Samsung Odyssey OLED G7

Samsung’s 2027 Odyssey range had the widest spread of any monitor lineup in Cologne, and the 42-inch Odyssey OLED G7 is the one I’d want at home. Samsung calls it the first 42-inch 16:9 curved OLED gaming monitor, with 1000R curvature, 4K resolution, a 165Hz refresh rate, and a 0.03ms response time. Screen area grows roughly 72% over the 32-inch model it replaces.

A 32:9 monitor takes over a desk. The G7 makes more sense with some distance between you and the screen, where its huge curved panel can fill your view. Samsung’s 49-inch OLED G9 hits 360 Hz at Dual QHD, while the 27-inch Odyssey G6 claims 1,100 Hz in HD through Dual Mode. I’d still pick the G7 as the more interesting monitor because its size changes the whole setup.

4. Best ultrawide splurge: Alienware 39 5K2K OLED (AW3926QW)

Alienware puts a four-stack, three-subpixel RB stripe tandem OLED into its 39-inch curved AW3926QW. The company calls it the first panel of its kind to reach the market. It runs at 5K2K and 165Hz, then switches to WHD at 330Hz when you need more speed. Text should also look cleaner than on older OLED ultrawides, while the newer panel design allows higher brightness and stronger contrast.

At $1,099, the AW3926QW costs less than I’d expect from a 39-inch 5K2K OLED. You’ll need a desk deep enough to sit comfortably in front of a screen that wide. If one monitor has to handle work during the day, movies at night, and competitive games in between, the Alienware makes a strong case.

5. Best laptop tease: NVIDIA RTX Spark

NVIDIA gave most of its gamescom slot to DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction and GeForce Now updates, though the machines tucked away at the back of the hall interest me more. RTX Spark laptops are built around an Arm chip and were shown running 007 First Light and Arc Raiders at 1440p above 100 FPS, with settings near maximum, and DLSS switched on.

I wouldn’t buy one based on the pitch alone. Windows on Arm has had enough gaming compatibility issues that I’d wait for independent frame-rate tests. 

What I like is the size. It aims to handle work and gaming without the weight of a typical gaming laptop. At gamescom, I didn’t see another machine that came as close to challenging the MacBook Pro in that space.

6. Best networking gamble: ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BN98

Wi-Fi 8 is not a finished standard yet, but ASUS is already putting the label on the GT-BN98. I’d view it as a bet on what comes next, not a router you need right away. Its quad-band system reaches 25,000 Mbps, with up to 11,529 Mbps available on 6 GHz. Two 10G ports, four 2.5G ports, and a powerful processor round out the hardware.

I’d wait for the price before getting too excited about the GT-BN98. Wi-Fi 8 is still a draft, and ASUS hasn’t said what its first router will cost. The hardware makes more sense in a home with 10G internet and a lot of connected devices. GNet handles game-traffic routing, while Guest Network Pro gives you five SSIDs to separate everything on the network.

7. Best storage jump: Samsung Portable SSD P9

The P9 is the Samsung portable SSD you’ll want to watch if you move large files all day. USB4 takes sequential reads up to 4,000 MB/s and writes to 3,800 MB/s, around twice the speeds Samsung lists for the 4 TB T9. There’s also an 8 TB version, which Samsung says is the first portable USB4 SSD at these speeds. Sustained writes are rated for 12K direct recording.

The price takes some of the shine off the P9. A 1 TB drive costs $339.99, and the 8 TB model jumps to $2,699.99. Samsung’s slower P7 starts at $289.99 for 1 TB, which makes the P9 a tough sell for basic storage. It should be easier to justify if your day involves large video files. Global rollout begins August 31.

8. Best cheap upgrade: CHERRY XTRFY M42V2

Peripheral launches at trade shows usually arrive with a premium price and a sensor nobody asked for. CHERRY XTRFY went the other way with the M42V2, a 45-gram mouse at 39.99 EUR/USD/GBP that went on sale August 27. Two swappable back shells come in the box, and CPI, polling rate, lift-off distance, and debounce time can all be changed on the mouse without software.

The Pixart 3327 sensor caps out at 6,200 CPI and 1,000 Hz polling, which sounds modest beside the ROG Gladius IV Ace and its 65,000 DPI sensor and 8,000 Hz receiver. Most players will never notice the gap mid-match. Upgrading from a bundled office mouse, the M42V2 is the best value announced in Cologne, and its solid shell skips the honeycomb look I’ve never warmed to.

9. Best controller idea: Genki Manta Controller

I usually don’t care much about controller software. The Manta caught my attention because its 2.7-inch color display puts the settings right on the controller. You can change stick settings, trigger modes, profiles, and macros without reaching for your phone or opening a desktop app.

The analog face buttons interest me more. You can choose how far you press before a button registers, rather than relying on the usual click. That could be useful in a game where your thumb spends most of its time on the same button.

I play fighting games and shooters, so I want different trigger behavior depending on the game. The Manta lets me switch between them without digging through firmware settings or keeping another controller around. I’m less sure how that display will look after a year of coffee-table abuse.

10 Best nostalgia buy: Commodore 77

Commodore’s collaboration with CD Projekt Red gave us the strangest product of the week, and I want one. The Commodore 77 runs at 77 MHz, compared with 1 MHz in the original Commodore 64. 

It also has 77 MB of system RAM and a weathered Cyberpunk finish, complete with a brushed metal plate above the function keys. Preorders opened at $377, with deliveries expected sometime next year.

Every unit ships with an Arasaka cartridge holding a demo from Polish group Arise, scored by chiptune artist LukHash. Retro hardware usually charges a premium for a plastic shell wrapped around an emulator. Commodore instead built a machine quick enough to break your own BASIC programs, which is a far better joke.

11. Best gaming accessory: IKEA x XBOX YXSTABY

Most gaming furniture would look out of place in my living room, but IKEA and XBOX went in a different direction with YSTABY. The range includes a joystick-shaped stool that wobbles, a lounge chair, and a rolling coffee table with room for controllers and other gear. IKEA hasn’t announced prices yet, although I wouldn’t expect them to be outrageous.

The wobbling stool nods at an XBOX thumbstick while encouraging the forward lean competitive players adopt anyway. Furniture that refuses to announce itself as gaming furniture has been missing from the category for years, and plenty of players have quietly wanted it. IKEA is the obvious brand to fix the problem, and Microsoft was smart to hand over the keys.

The games I’d keep an eye on

Alien: Isolation 2 is the announcement I cared about most. Moving from a claustrophobic space station to a planet surface is a big gamble, but I want to see how Creative Assembly handles it. METRO 2039 picks up Dmitry Glukhovsky’s series, while Rainbow Six Tactics takes the franchise in a very different direction with military strategy. Game of Thrones: War for Westeros gets another shot at turning the fantasy epic into a game worth playing.

CD Projekt Red is remastering The Witcher 3 in September and handing it free to existing owners, alongside a new region and story. LEGO Skylines from Iceflake looked like the cozy pick of the show, a city builder with no instructions and unlimited space. Farming Simulator 25 also passed five million copies sold, which tells you plenty about what people play versus what earns applause at a keynote.

What I’d buy and what I’d wait on

Component pricing hangs over every product above. NVIDIA has warned some of its largest customers that semiconductor prices could climb by as much as 15%, console prices have risen mid-cycle instead of falling, and German industry revenue dropped 3% to €4.2 billion in the first half of 2026 as hardware sales fell 8%.

My advice is to spend on the display and wait on everything else. Panels announced in Cologne will hold their value through the next two years of price pressure, while routers, drives, and handhelds all have successors already scheduled. The M42V2 at $39.99 is the one cheap purchase I’d make without a second thought.