2026 Roblox Innovation Awards: Every Category Winner Explained

Roblox capped its 20th-anniversary celebrations by handing out the 2026 Roblox Innovation Awards (nicknamed RIA26), the company's annual recognition of the games, creators, and studios that "keep surprising us, raising the bar, and showing us things we didn't know were possible on Roblox." Twenty awards were given out across gameplay genres, technical achievement, and community categories, and one game walked away with four of them.

Here is the complete winner list from the 2026 Roblox Innovation Awards, organized by category, with what each winning game or creator actually does.

1. What Are the Roblox Innovation Awards

The Roblox Innovation Awards are Roblox's official yearly honors for standout experiences and creators on the platform, covering everything from shooters and RPGs to plugins, UGC avatar design, and video content built around Roblox games. Roblox published the full 2026 winners list on its official newsroom on September 12, 2026, as part of a broader run of anniversary coverage that also included The Hunt: Roblox 20 live event and the news out of RDC 2026. Roblox didn't publish voting or judging details for this round, but the award post frames RIA26 as a celebration of craft and player impact rather than a pure popularity contest — though one category is explicitly decided by the community, and it's covered below.

The 20 awards split roughly into three buckets: genre honors for the best game in a specific style (shooter, RPG, survival, and so on), community and creator awards for the people building the platform's tools and avatars rather than a single game, and a handful of catch-all honors — Best New Game, People's Choice, and the closing Builderman Award — that can go to any experience regardless of genre. That last group is where the night's biggest story happened.

2. Best Shooter, Survival, and Action Winners

Best Shooter: RIVALS

Nosniy Games' RIVALS took Best Shooter. Roblox described it as "a polished, competitive FPS built around intense 1v1 duels to 5v5 battles" that's "easy to jump into and very hard to put down."

Best Survival Game: 99 Nights in the Forest

Grandma's Favourite Games picked up Best Survival Game for 99 Nights in the Forest, a co-op survival title where players "build a camp, gather resources, and rescue the missing kids" while fending off a forest monster.

Best Action Game: Jujutsu Shenanigans

Tze's Shenanigans won Best Action Game for Jujutsu Shenanigans, praised by Roblox for "fast combat, big abilities, destructive chaos, and exactly the right amount of shenanigans."

3. Best RPG, Strategy, Sports, Puzzle, and Classic Game Winners

Best RPG: Piggy: Intercity

Piggy: Intercity — the latest evolution of the long-running Piggy series — won Best RPG. Roblox's citation notes that "Piggy goes open world with exploration, characters, base building, and player choices."

Best Strategy Game: Mini War

M&M Community's Mini War won Best Strategy Game. The pitch, per Roblox: "start with a small country, build its economy, raise an army, and decide whether diplomacy or total domination is the better path."

Best Sports Game: FIFA Super Soccer

Play! Football's FIFA Super Soccer won Best Sports Game, recognized for bringing "the game's energy, competition, and global appeal to Roblox."

Best Puzzle Game: Finish The Word

Table Game X's Finish The Word won Best Puzzle Game — Roblox called it "a wonderfully simple idea with surprisingly stressful consequences."

Best Classic Game: Natural Disaster Survival

Stickmasterluke's Natural Disaster Survival, one of the platform's longest-running titles, won Best Classic Game. The award nods to a game where players "survive the flood, dodge the meteors, and stare in awe at the ones who make it through."

4. Animal Hospital's Big Night: Four Awards in One Ceremony

No single game had a bigger RIA26 than Animal Hospital, developed by Animal Anomaly. It swept four separate categories: Best New Game, Best Innovation in Creative Direction, People's Choice, and the night's closing honor, the Builderman Award.

Roblox's write-up leans into the game's unsettling hospital setting: "From the creepy hospital setting to the decidedly abnormal patients, Animal Hospital's creative identity captures players' attention almost immediately." For Best New Game, Roblox simply noted, "The night shift at this animal hospital gets weird fast." The People's Choice award — the one category explicitly decided by the community rather than Roblox's own judging — went the same way, with Roblox writing, "Apparently the community agrees: Questionable veterinary practices make for a pretty great Roblox game."

5. Best Studio, UGC Creator, and Video Star

Best Studio: Nosniy Games

Beyond RIVALS' individual win, Nosniy Games was also named Best Studio, described by Roblox as a team that "continues to combine craft, polish, and a deep understanding of what makes players want to come back."

Best UGC Creator: Valkenheim

Valkenheim won Best UGC Creator, recognized for avatar design work that Roblox says shows "just how much personality and imagination can fit into an avatar."

Best Video Star: Laughability

YouTube creator Laughability won Best Video Star. Roblox's note was brief and warm: "Being a star has its perks. Thanks for the stories, humor, and unique creator-driven PoV!" It's a reminder that Roblox's award slate isn't limited to games shipped on the platform itself — content creators who build an audience around Roblox experiences get their own lane too, alongside the developers and UGC artists.

6. Best Plugin, Tech, and Party/Casual Innovation

Best Plugin: UGC Makers Toolbox

Onogork's UGC Makers Toolbox won Best Plugin, built to make "the process of building UGC easier" for other creators on the platform.

Best Innovation in Tech: TTK

Sable Digital's TTK won Best Innovation in Tech, an "ambitious tactical shooter pushing on what high-fidelity combat can look and feel like on Roblox."

Best Party & Casual Game: +1 Speed Keyboard Escape

SecretVerse Studio's +1 Speed Keyboard Escape won Best Party & Casual Game, summed up by Roblox as "fast, accessible, and delightfully chaotic."

Best Innovation in a Branded Game: Steal a Brainrot x GOAT

Do Big's crossover event Steal a Brainrot x GOAT won Best Innovation in a Branded Game — Roblox called it "a collision of one of Roblox's biggest cultural phenomena with a major entertainment property." It's the only 2026 winner built specifically around a licensed crossover rather than an original concept, and it reflects how much of Roblox's current player attention still runs through Steal a Brainrot, one of the platform's biggest hits of the past year.

Quick Recap

• Animal Hospital (Animal Anomaly) was the biggest winner of the night with four awards, including the closing Builderman Award and the community-voted People's Choice honor.
• Nosniy Games doubled up, winning Best Shooter for RIVALS and Best Studio overall.
• Genre awards spanned shooters, survival, action, RPG, strategy, sports, puzzle, and classic games — plus creator-facing honors for plugins, UGC design, and video content.
• Roblox published the full list on its official newsroom; no separate public vote or nominee shortlist was released outside the People's Choice category.

Official Resources

• 2026 Roblox Innovation Awards — official Roblox newsroom announcement
• Browse games on Roblox.com

For more on what else Roblox has going on this month, see our breakdown of the upcoming Roblox Plus private server limit change or check the full walkthroughs and guides archive for other platforms.