Mar 13, 2026

GDC 2026 Highlights: What's Next on Meta Horizon OS

There's a certain kind of energy you only find at a conference like GDC, and it isn't limited to the shine of a keynote.

It shows up when a tool update solves a real pain point, when an audience trend turns into an actionable takeaway, and when a hallway conversation becomes the seed for a better strategy. The excitement about development as a craft spills out of the session rooms and onto the expo floor.

We came to GDC 2026 with a simple point of view: even amid broader industry challenges, VR's future is bright, and the data backs it up. Progress is earned through iteration cycles and a steady series of small, targeted optimizations, and the space keeps moving because developers keep pushing it forward.

That's why our week, on stage and at the booth, focused less on hype and more on the practical craft of shipping: faster workflows (including AI-assisted iteration), clearer paths to performance, and a Meta Horizon Store trajectory aimed at improving reach, discovery, and revenue for the teams building what's next.

Whether you're keeping tabs remotely or need a debrief after taking off your badge for the last time this week, dive in to discover our highlights from GDC 2026.

Big Picture: Where VR and Meta Horizon OS are Headed

Throughout the week, we reinforced a clear message: we're doubling down on VR and the third-party developer ecosystem, with a renewed focus on building a sustainable, long-term platform. We're also sharpening clarity and providing deeper insights so developers know exactly who they're building for and how to succeed.

Chris Pruett (Director of Games, Meta) shared VR industry trends and what they signal for the future of the platform and developers.

A few themes worth sharing:

VR is growing and evolving. The VR market hasn't accelerated as quickly as anticipated, but it is expanding, and it's driven by developers who keep raising the bar for comfort, performance, and replayable content. In fact, more people used Meta Quest in 2025 than any other year, and IAP increased by 13% year over year.

The developer audience is diversifying. We continue to see distinct segments: core VR enthusiasts, teens and young adults drawn to social gameplay loops, and "casual adult" users who gravitate toward entertainment and prefer more natural input like hand tracking.

We're reducing friction between prototype and ship. Across 10 sessions, we emphasized practical platform improvements: better workflows for testing and performance debugging, stronger measurement and monetization tooling, and updated documentation so teams can spend more time refining comfort, gameplay, and polish.

Attendees watched AI prompts turn into playable mechanics, with tools like Meta XR Simulator making it fast to test and iterate.

To bring those themes to life, we translated them into something developers could touch: hands-on demos, practical tooling walkthroughs, and high-signal conversations on the show floor.

The Meta Booth: Demos, Tooling, and Meaningful Conversations

On the show floor, we designed the Meta booth to deliver hands-on proof through dedicated zones for developer tooling, game demos, and in-the-moment conversations with Metamates.

At the Meta booth, attendees could try game demos, learn more about developer tools, and get answers in real time.

Highlights from the booth experience included:

Developer tooling stations focused on "how to build" and "how to ship," including hands-on guided flows across key Horizon OS workflows like setup, building and iteration, and testing. To see how some of these tools can help you, check out our Day 2 recap.

Demo stations for Meta Quest titles that showcased best-in-class VR and mixed reality experiences. As Chris Pruett (Director of Games, Meta) highlighted in his session, a wider variety of genres are finding success than ever before. By showing several versions of "what great VR looks like," we helped attendees gain some inspiration that can carry over into their next build.

Ask-an-Expert: concierge-style support that enabled fast answers to technical and business questions.

Game highlights showcased the range of VR, mixed reality, and growing opportunities to build across several genres.

Across sessions and the booth, the mix of inspiration and practical problem-solving set up the next major thread from the week: how developers are leveraging AI in their workflows.

How AI is Shaping Development (and What Developers Found Useful)

A major through-line at GDC 2026 was that AI is increasingly becoming part of the development workflow, but success hinges on using it as an accelerator for iteration, debugging, and prototyping (not a replacement for creative direction or craft).

Agentic workflows for VR development

Across sessions we highlighted how agentic workflows can compress iteration cycles, from prototyping to performance debugging, especially when paired with real VR development constraints (frame time budgets, device testing, rapid iteration on interactions). Be sure to check out our Day 1 and Day 2 recaps for more details.

Immersive Web SDK updates: "vibe coding" for VR

AI is also extending beyond core game engines. One of the most exciting developments centered on WebXR "vibe coding" workflows enabled by the Immersive Web SDK (IWSDK), delivering a fast, low-friction loop for building web-based experiences:

No build step: Edit, refresh, and iterate quickly (especially powerful when collaborating with an AI coding agent).

AI that can operate the running app and take actions to inspect behavior, check logs, and suggest fixes based on what it sees.

A framework that abstracts the hard parts of WebXR such as physics, locomotion, hand tracking, and spatial UI so developers can stay focused on experience design and gameplay.

Taken together, IWSDK and agentic tooling showed a path toward faster prototyping and broader participation in XR creation, including creators and developers who don't have deep technical experience today.

To get started, check out the documentation, and stay tuned in to the Meta Horizon Developers blog for more information on "vibe coding" with IWSDK coming soon.

Meta Horizon Store and ecosystem updates (reach, discovery, revenue)

Every studio wants to be successful, so it's no surprise that consistent developer priorities every year revolve around players discovering apps and leveraging proven paths for growth. This year we leaned into concrete platform changes aimed at improving visibility, discovery, and monetization capacity for third-party titles:

Store updates give more visibility to VR apps and games. We're removing individual worlds from store shelves and separating Worlds as a platform from the Store in the mobile app. It's still early, but we're already seeing positive signals in platform revenue as the result of this change. Learn more by reading the recent blog post from Samanatha Ryan (VP of Content, Reality Labs).

Discoverability improvements including new entry points such as a "Deals" tab, and continued investment in better matching users with apps and games.

More ways to monetize and engage via tools like Season Passes and Featured Bundles, plus expanded engagement surfaces such as enhanced Developer Posts and Developer Profiles.

Features like Developer Posts have evolved into a full engagement channel, combining community feedback via comments, monetization with embedded add-ons, and measurement through real-time analytics.

Looking ahead, we're strengthening store trust signals, with ratings and reviews improvements on the 2026 roadmap to help players choose with confidence and help great titles earn the visibility they deserve. For more details on discovery in the Meta Horizon Store, check out our Day 2 recap.

Third-Party Spotlights: Partners Who Helped Bring the Story to Life

A key ingredient of the GDC recipe is developers getting the chance to hear directly from successful teams. This year, we partnered with standout third-party studios to share candid lessons and practical frameworks:

Continuum: Failing forward to product-market fit

The Continuum team (Spencer Cook, Michael Murdock, and Kyle Sills) gave an honest look at the messy parts of VR development. Despite their hit UG⁠ becoming a top 2025 standout, the session was less of a victory lap and more of a blueprint for how progress evolves: test quickly, measure what matters, listen closely to players, and be equipped to adapt when the data says your strategy isn't landing.

From pivots to breakout results, Continuum shared a practical look at VR iteration and decision making.

One key takeaway was that early "wrong bets" aren't wasted time if you treat them as inputs. With iterative experimentation and analytics-driven decision making, Continuum showed how you can turn missed swings into momentum (and eventually into a breakout hit).

Creature Games: Designing for real rooms, not imaginary spaces

If Continuum's session was about finding the fun even when the path isn't always linear, Creature Games was about finding the fit. CEO Doug North Cook unpacked a mindset shift that teams building for mixed reality have to encounter: how to effectively and creatively build with players' physical space.

The talk explored mixed reality design principles, from comfort and movement to spatial boundaries and embodied interaction. From a high level, what resonated throughout the session was "playful architecture," meaning experiences that adapt to real environments and feel natural in the places people actually live.

Earlier in the week, our sessions covered AI Building Blocks that can help you get started building mixed reality apps that rely on object detection and computer vision. You can also check out the video below from the Meta Horizon Start Program that walks through leveraging Passthrough Camera Access and AI Building Blocks in your project.

AI Building Blocks help developers add "scene-aware" behavior to apps, combining camera access with object detection and responsive LLM prompts.

Watch Full Sessions: Coming Soon

GDC may be over, but the work (and the momentum) continues. Over the next few weeks, we'll share more insights and resources to help you apply what we covered on the show floor and on stage. We'll also keep routing the feedback we heard at the booth and in sessions into our product roadmaps, with a focus on reducing friction from prototype to ship.

And if you missed a talk or want to revisit the details, full session videos will be available soon. Above all, our direction stays clear: we're investing in VR developers for the long haul, strengthening our platform's fundamentals, and making it easier to build, ship, and grow on Meta Horizon OS.

Catch up on more announcements and insights from our week at GDC:

GDC Day 1 Recap

GDC Day 2 Recap

The State of VR at GDC 2026

Get the latest news and join the conversation: Check out the Meta Horizon Developer Forum⁠, follow us on Facebook⁠ and X⁠, and subscribe to our monthly newsletter⁠.

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