Hot on the heels of taking home an award each at The Game Awards 2025, Xbox's DOOM: The Dark Ages and South of Midnight are both up for another award in 2026, right as the latter is about to launch on PS5 and Switch 2 this spring.
Yep, id Software's visceral shooter and Compulsion Games' deep-south adventure have both been nominated for the 'Outstanding Visual Arts in a Real-Time Project' prize at the VES Awards 2026. VES stands for 'Visual Effects Society', covering games, movies and more, and is in its 24th iteration this year.
Here's the full list of games that have been nominated for this award:
- Battlefield 6
- Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
- DOOM: The Dark Ages
- Ghost of Yotei
- South of Midnight
That's a pretty tough list to compete within, but we'd like to wish the respective Xbox teams luck in taking home the prize. To be honest, any of these games would be worthy winners — but on a personal note, I'd love to see South of Midnight win something for its fantastic visual design. I'm still thinking about some of the sequences in that game to this day!
The VES Awards take place on February 25th, 2026, so we've got just over a month until we find out who wins. And, in the case of South of Midnight, we have a PS5 and Switch 2 release to follow as well, although that's only scheduled for a rough 'Spring 2026' launch at the time of writing.