The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Minister Choi Hwi-young) and the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA, President Kim Yoon-ji) have selected 40 teams to advance to Stage 3 of the 2026 Korea Indie Game DevCamp, following staged evaluation of 1,461 applicant teams — more than double last year’s application volume.
DevCamp is an indie game development support program running across four total stages, from initial concept through vertical-slice prototype, providing development grants and customized growth programming at each stage to strengthen creators’ development capability and help produce higher-quality indie games.
The Selection Funnel
This year’s 1,461 applications represent fierce competition well beyond the program’s previous scale. KOCCA’s staged evaluation selected 130 teams at Stage 1, 75 at Stage 2, and 40 at Stage 3. From Stage 2 onward, evaluation shifted to judges directly testing each team’s actual developed game build — moving beyond early-concept review to focus specifically on development capability and build completeness.
The three-day Stage 3 evaluation ran a pre-review day followed by two days of formal judging, with the judging panel carefully examining each project’s development build and submitted documentation, directly demonstrating each game to assess core content appeal, originality, and implementation quality comprehensively.
KOCCA specifically arranged high-performance computers and device-specific demonstration equipment to evaluate submissions stably across varied development environments, pre-checking each build’s execution status in advance — minimizing external variables like runtime errors so judging could focus purely on originality and stable implementation, creating what the agency describes as a fair evaluation environment.
Technical Advisory, Exhibition, and Investment Connections — Seven Partner Companies
Stage 3 teams receive in-depth advisory support across specific domains to raise game completeness and support market entry. Stage 1 provided development seminars; Stage 2 provided mentoring; the eventual Stage 4 teams will exhibit their work directly to the public and industry professionals at the “Korea Indie Game Showcase” exhibition in Pangyo this December.
KOCCA has also signed partnership agreements with seven leading companies — Neowiz, Discord, Smilegate, Com2uS Holdings, Krafton, Toss (Viva Republica), and Pearl Abyss — each providing customized collaboration programming suited to their specific strengths. In August, this included an online lecture series with Discord and Pearl Abyss-linked participation in a joint booth at the Busan Indie Connect Festival (BIC). This October, KOCCA will partner with Valve (operator of Steam) and BIC to hold special lectures and networking events specifically for domestic indie developers.
No Team Left Behind: Continued Support for All 130 Stage 1 Teams
KOCCA is continuing follow-up support for all 130 originally selected teams regardless of whether they advanced to Stage 3 — customized mentoring, indie game market trend briefings, industry event attendance, and investment/publishing connections, aimed at helping every participating team continue development and successfully enter the market.
KOCCA Game New Technology Division Director Kim Sung-jun: “Not just the 40 teams advancing to Stage 3, but all 130 teams are important talent who will lead the future of Korea’s indie game industry. Ahead of selecting the 20 teams advancing to the final Stage 4 this November, we will spare no effort in supporting excellent indie games through DevCamp to successfully enter the market.”
