Okay, so, SGDQ 2026 is happening right now, like, it’s live, streaming from Minneapolis, Minnesota. It started July 5 and it runs through July 11. They’re raising money for Doctors Without Borders again, which is good, that’s their usual charity for the summer event. The opening run, it was Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, a 102% clear, which is a pretty rare category for a main GDQ event, according to Shacknews.

That’s a deep cut, you know, not just the any% stuff. The speedrunning scene, it’s still big, still growing, but like, viewership numbers, they’ve been a bit up and down. SGDQ 2024, that one actually saw viewership stabilize, which was a good sign after some pandemic-era drops. It pulled in 8.21 million Hours Watched and had 88.6 thousand Peak Viewers. That was for Super Metroid actually, that game was the most popular by peak viewership for SGDQ 2024.

Then SGDQ 2025, it had 7.12 million Hours Watched and 72,083 Peak Viewers. So, a little dip there, but still solid numbers, still millions of hours watched. You see a lot of the same games popping up, the classics, like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Super Metroid, Celeste. Those are always there, always being run. Dark Souls, Minecraft also get a lot of attention. It’s interesting how some games just have that replayability, that depth for glitches and sequence breaks, that keeps runners coming back and finding new ways to break them. The community itself, it’s huge, I mean, YouTube alone had over 400 channels in the speedrunning community in 2021, generating over 1.2 billion views.

That’s a lot of eyes. The whole thing really blew up during COVID, peaked in January 2021, everyone stuck inside, watching people play games fast. Speedrun.com, that’s the main hub, it has over 40,000 game communities and 4.8 million speedruns logged. That’s a lot of data, a lot of people dedicated to this. And the charity aspect, that’s a big part of GDQ.

They’ve raised over $50,000,000 collectively across all events for various charities. AGDQ 2026, the one earlier this year, it raised $2,445,186. SGDQ 2025 raised $2,464,026. SGDQ 2024 brought in over $2.57 million in donations.

So, even with some viewership fluctuations, the money keeps coming in for good causes. It’s a good model, you know, combining entertainment with philanthropy. Does that make it more sustainable long-term, this charity angle? I think so. I mean, I’m still holding onto my NTDOY shares, bought them at $10.62 on September 15, 2023.

Plan is to sell if it hits $15.00, or if Nintendo announces the Switch 2 and the stock somehow drops below $9.00, which would be wild, but you never know with these things. The market is just… unpredictable. The schedule for SGDQ 2026 has some interesting stuff, not just the old favorites. Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are on there. There’s even a Kirby Air Riders run, which apparently made its marathon debut. And a Spyro race, classic versus remake, that’s a cool idea.

It keeps things fresh, you know, mixing the old with the new, and sometimes the really new. They’re trying new games, like Absolum and Blue Fire also made their debuts. It’s a good way to keep the audience engaged, not just the hardcore fans but also casual viewers who might just drop in.