SGDQ 2026 Day 7: Clair Obscur Finale Caps $1.3M Charity Marathon
Summer Games Done Quick 2026 closed out its week-long run in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a final tally of $1,380,573 raised for Doctors Without Borders, according to the event’s live donation tracker aggregated by GDQ Stats. The seven-day marathon ended in the early hours of Sunday with a restricted any% run of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, bringing down the curtain on a schedule that mixed brand-new 2026 releases with decades-old cult classics.
Summer Games Done Quick 2026 is back in Minneapolis, Minnesota, raising money for Doctors Without Borders, continuing a tradition that has run in the Twin Cities for a decade. Back for its 10th year in the Twin Cities, the event sees speedrunners push video games to the absolute brink, for a good cause, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Sends Off SGDQ 2026
The marathon’s closing slot went to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Sandfall Interactive’s turn-based hit that swept last year’s Game Awards. The most recent Game Awards winner, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, served as this year’s Summer Games Done Quick finale, a booking Kotaku flagged when the schedule first dropped in May. It wasn’t the game’s first appearance on a GDQ stage, either: this marked Clair Obscur’s second GDQ outing, following the winter event’s any-percent race at Awesome Games Done Quick in January.
The finale run fell to speedrunner Z3RO1337, who had also handled the game’s AGDQ 2026 showing months earlier. Runner Z3RO1337, making his return following his Awesome Games Done Quick 2026 run, aimed to finish the game in just 1:25:00. Per GDQ Stats’ schedule log, the run actually landed in the early hours of Sunday morning local time, after the marathon’s traditional late-week slippage pushed the closing blocks past midnight.
$1.38 Million Sits Well Behind GDQ’s All-Time Records
SGDQ 2026’s final haul places it a long way off the series’ benchmark numbers. Per GDQ Stats’ own comparison charts, the all-time single-event high remains Awesome Games Done Quick 2022 at $3,419,603, while the fastest any GDQ event has hit the $1 million mark is 3 days and 9 hours, also set at AGDQ 2022 — this July’s event needed roughly 4 days and 18 hours to cross that threshold. The record for best single day of donations, $1,522,211 set on Day 7 of AGDQ 2020, also held firm, with SGDQ 2026’s best day topping out at $340,451.
The total also lands well under this year’s winter event. After seven full days of epic speedruns, with a few interruptions caused by some ill-timed fire alarms, the GDQ team finished with a final total of $2,443,414 raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation back in January, according to Shacknews’ reporting on Awesome Games Done Quick 2026. GDQ’s two flagship marathons alternate charities each year, with the summer edition traditionally supporting Doctors Without Borders and the January show benefiting the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
Super Mario Maker 2 Troll Run Tops Individual Game Totals
Broken down by game, the standout single fundraiser of the week wasn’t the finale itself but a community showcase earlier in the marathon. According to GDQ Stats’ run-by-run breakdown, the Super Mario Maker 2 Troll Showcase pulled in $103,041, ahead of a four-player Elden Ring All Bosses co-op run at $87,812 and a Pokémon FireRed Elite Four Round 2 block that raised $74,162. A Sonic Dream Team Adventure any% race rounded out the week’s top four earners at $64,746.
Those figures sit alongside a schedule that, per Shacknews’ pre-event coverage, also featured GDQ debuts for Resident Evil Requiem, Saros and Slay the Spire 2, plus a Super Nintendo 102% run and a four-player Elden Ring boss gauntlet earlier in the week.
A Global Donor Base, Including Australian Viewers
As with past GDQ marathons, the donation feed drew contributions from well beyond Minneapolis. Among the messages logged on GDQ Stats’ live tracker during the event, one donor identified as NoxMiasma wrote “Hello from Australia!” alongside a $25 donation, underlining the marathon’s reach into the Asia-Pacific time zones where the stream runs deep into the local morning.
The event’s charity partnership was also backed by corporate sponsors. Doctors Without Borders thanked AMD and The Yetee as its Platinum sponsors for Summer Games Done Quick 2026, continuing a pattern of hardware and merchandise partners supporting the marathon’s fundraising push alongside direct viewer donations.
With SGDQ 2026 now closed, attention turns to Awesome Games Done Quick’s return in January 2027, when Games Done Quick will again fill a hotel ballroom with speedrunners and switch its charitable focus back to the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
Join the Conversation