🛠️ TGS2026 Cut Short by Typhoon; NetEase Off the Exhibitor List

Event Details

Tokyo Game Show 2026 was scheduled for September 17–21 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, billed as “the longest ever — five days non-stop” (business days Sep 17–18, public days Sep 19–21). With Typhoon No. 25 “Dujuan” forecast to approach the Kanto region, the organizer cancelled all Sep 21 on-site activities in advance, refunded Monday tickets and moved some stage programs online, cutting the effective run to four days. Per media counts, the four days drew 257,642 admissions (263,101 last year); 1,138 companies and organizations from 53 countries and regions exhibited, and 25 online livestreams ran on YouTube, X, Twitch and niconico.

Equally telling was the lineup shift. GameLook (via Tencent News) recorded that a cluster of large Chinese publishers who held prime floor space last year vanished from the general-public hall this year — Tencent and Century Huatong kept only B2B meeting booths, and miHoYo was absent for a second straight year. The Japanese community tracker 無限大Anantaまとめ速報 reports that NetEase and its studio Naked Rain do not appear on the TGS2026 exhibitor company list. Contrasted with the prior edition (TGS2025), when ANANTA did run a public playtest booth, ANANTA most likely had no public stand at TGS2026.

Impact

The significance of this node is about calibrating how we judge progress: ANANTA’s absence from TGS2026 sits inside a broader pull-back by Chinese majors from the consumer hall, and it comes after the January 15, 2027 release date, the publishing license and the monetization model had all been officially announced. It is therefore no evidence of the project slowing or being cancelled — closer to a change in exhibition cadence than in development. We log it on the timeline to remind readers that judging an unreleased game should rest on traceable facts — the locked date, the license, official press releases and pre-registration milestones — not on whether it attended any single show. Whether any non-public business meetings took place is not stated by the official side and is not confirmed here.