The indie calendar's most densely packed broadcast is back. INDIE Live Expo has confirmed that its spring 2026 showcase will air on Saturday, April 25, 2026, and the organizers are coming in swinging. The event will spotlight more than 200 independent games in a single broadcast, making it one of the biggest single-session indie presentations of the year and an obvious must-watch if you care about what is actually happening on the fringes of PC and console gaming right now.
For those who have not kept tabs on the show, INDIE Live Expo is a Japan-originated, globally broadcast celebration of indie games. It runs twice a year, and each edition has grown larger than the last. This spring's edition received a record 1,100 submissions from studios around the world, which the organizers have trimmed down to the 200 or so games that will be featured in trailers, updates, premieres, and rapid-fire spotlights across the broadcast.
That video is the first trailer for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, the long-awaited new game from Sukeban Games, the studio behind 2016's cult classic VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action. Parabellum is one of the headline titles of the showcase, and it is finally looking close to release after years of patient development work.
Why .45 Parabellum Bloodhound Is the Showcase's Big Draw
The game is an Active Time Action title, a hybrid battle system that mixes real-time positioning with turn-based skill chaining. The team has directly cited Parasite Eve, Square's 1998 PlayStation classic, as the core inspiration for that system. You play as Reila Mikazuchi, a former killer emerging from a long spiral of depression, trying to rebuild her life doing the one thing she is good at. The premise is pure Sukeban: hard-edged, emotionally raw, and wrapped in a cyberpunk aesthetic that feels hand-crafted rather than generated.
Sukeban confirmed late last year that the game is now content-complete from start to finish. A release date has not been formally announced, but based on the studio's public comments, the INDIE Live Expo slot is expected to finally deliver one. If you have been following this project since its 2024 reveal, April 25 is circled on your calendar for that reason alone.
The INDIE Waves Rapid-Fire Block Returns, Sponsored by Cygames
Among the 200 featured games, 160 of them will roll through the broadcast's signature INDIE Waves segment, a rapid-fire block of short trailers designed to give smaller studios visibility they often cannot buy anywhere else. Cygames is back as the sponsor of that segment for 2026, which is the kind of backing that lets the organizers pay for production quality without charging developers to participate.
The philosophy of INDIE Waves has always been unapologetically inclusive. You get studios from Japan, Korea, Europe, Latin America, and North America sharing a stage, with the only real filter being whether the project is actually in a playable or demonstrable state. Over the years, the segment has served as a launchpad for titles that later went on to win major awards at The Game Awards and the BAFTAs, which is a quiet but meaningful track record for what is technically a free community broadcast.
Confirmed Featured Games
Beyond Parabellum, the organizers have revealed a handful of other games that will receive dedicated slots during the broadcast:
- moorestech — A five-year passion project from Japanese studio sakastudios, pitched as automation sim meets anime RPG. The kind of ambitious genre mashup indie is uniquely positioned to deliver.
- Magical Princess — A child-rearing simulator based on the Magical board game series, developed by Neotro and published by MAGI Inc. Expect a heartfelt, systems-heavy life sim.
- No Mortal Space — A newly teased project that the organizers have been careful to keep details on. The teaser trailer released earlier this week hints at a sci-fi horror setting.
The full schedule of featured games beyond these confirmations will be revealed in pre-show teases across the INDIE Live Expo social channels over the next ten days. The pattern from previous shows suggests you should expect at least three to four world premieres from studios that have not publicly announced their next project yet.
How and When to Watch
The showcase airs on Saturday, April 25 at 2:00 AM PT / 5:00 AM ET / 6:00 PM JST / 10:00 AM BST. That is an awkward slot for North American viewers, so most of you will probably catch this one as a VOD rather than live. The full broadcast will be available on YouTube in English, Japanese, and Korean, as well as Twitch in English and Japanese, and additional simulcasts on X, Niconico, Bilibili, and TikTok.
Returning as hosts for the English broadcast are J-mon and Kaori Horiuchi, a pairing that has anchored several previous editions of the show and whose back-and-forth energy tends to keep a four-hour broadcast of back-to-back trailers more watchable than it has any right to be.
Why This Matters
INDIE Live Expo sits in a genuinely unusual spot in the industry calendar. It is not a publisher showcase, it is not a platform-holder event, and it is not gated behind any kind of paid participation. That makes it one of the last remaining events where a small studio with a good idea and a decent trailer can get meaningful airtime alongside projects from studios twenty times their size. In an industry that has spent the last few years getting squeezed by layoffs and consolidation, that matters more than it used to.
The April 25 showcase is shaping up to be one of the most game-packed editions of the event to date. Between the return of a confirmed cult classic in .45 Parabellum Bloodhound, the massive scope of the INDIE Waves segment, and whatever surprise premieres the organizers are holding back, this is going to be a lot to sit through. Pour a second coffee.
