Manifesto Jam 2026

332 manifestoes submitted to one of the all time craziest jams ever hosted on Itch.io. Mindape is here with the goods. Get your reading glasses ready.

What the hell is MANIFESTO JAM?

For one week in June we saw one of the most MANIC all-time outpourings of creative energy on itch.io. What’s shocking is that this was not some basic game jam with wide appeal or low entry requirements, rankings or prizes. Instead it was a jam restricted to a soapbox shouting match of competing MANIFESTOES.

From the Jam Page, by the host haraiva:

"SEND ME YOUR ADDRESS SO I CAN VISIT YOU AND EXPLAIN MY PASSIONS. I'm sick of talks. I'm sick of takeaways and I'm sick of talking around games and never dipping below the surface; always circling the drain, never looking down the maelstrom below, never willing to take the plunge. In the microcosm of english-language game making/writing, the discursive ecosystem has been overrun with grifters, clout-chasers, compulsive social media posters, linkedin users and large language models spouting bullshit, saturating the atmosphere with hot air, leaving little breathing room for critique that aims--as Em Reed wrote in the manifesto for the first Manifesto Jam--to 'converse, complicate, and imagine alternatives."

This is actually the third manifesto jam (previous ones occurred in 2018 and 2022) but this time through some collective hysteria the biggest one by far. It started out slow but quickly went out of control, with users submitting multiple manifestoes, cross-referencing each other, building to a fever pitch of delirium. It’s quite incredible to me that in 2026, over a century after the Manifesto of Futurism launched the fad for avant-garde manifesto writing, we saw within 1 measly week the birth of 332 distinct manifestoes that did not previously exist.

And these things were visceral, with themes ranging from takedowns of the video game industry, radical poetics, artistic self-indulgence, Coach McGurk, personal trauma, dating, feminism, revolutionary optimism, anti-pedagogy, meta-manfesto-manifestoes, and hundreds more idiosyncratic ideas!

What other “genre” today could support a single manifesto, let alone 332!? Literary fiction, cinema, genre writing, painting, dance, drama… So many captured media, incapacitated by commercial and academic smothering and a moribund status quo, such that the appearance of a manifesto in 2026 would be seen as completely tasteless and unhinged (and I do hope against hope people do them anyway…)

Anyway, here’s a jam Manifesto Sampler:

ARTISANAL GRUEL by S.T.

READ HERE // This crazy thing really set the tone for the rest of the jam. Absolutely bonkers rant against lacklustre compromise in personal vision.

the leaving of meaning something for (you) to find by br0kenleg

READ HERE // Exquisite nocturne; a night-walk complete with fragmentary subvocalizations from the starless atmosphere itself. An AWKWARD POETIC GROPING AROUND. Until one\s eyes adjust to the night. Superb. This is the real deal!

MAKE THE PLAYER by Beck Michalak

READ HERE // Less a manifesto with polemical content and more of a straight-up THREAT. Explains a lot about how Beck’s games are so goddamn coercive.

THE RETURN OF THE Notecard Mini-festos by Emma Dee

READ HERE // Handwritten cue-cards en masse. These things are jam packed with ultimatums!

Check out more madness at the Manifesto Jam 2026