Miyamoto Order of Culture: A First for Video Games

The highest cultural honor in Japan now belongs, in part, to video games. The Japanese government named Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto as one of eight recipients of the 2026 Order of Culture on October 23, making him the first game developer to receive the award in its history, according to Automaton Media. The Miyamoto Order of Culture selection puts game development onto the honor roll for the first time, under a field designation appearing on the roll for the first time: Media Arts (Gaming). For a medium that spent decades arguing it deserved the same standing as film and literature, the announcement reads as the state's most direct answer yet.

Miyamoto addressed reporters at Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto the day before the formal Miyamoto Order of Culture announcement. He told the press he felt a little embarrassed by the honor, and that games are not created by one person but by many people working together, saying he would accept the award as a representative of everyone who helped make them. Looking back on nearly five decades in the industry, he said games had become so ordinary a part of everyday life that people barely notice them, which for him was the clearest sign of the medium's place in culture. The conferment ceremony is scheduled for Culture Day on November 3, when the Emperor will personally present the award at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. He said he had been fortunate to spend his career in the field, and believed the honor reflected his presence in the industry's earliest days.

What the honor actually is

The Order of Culture sits at the top of Japan's civilian honors. Recipients are chosen from among the country's Persons of Cultural Merit, a list Miyamoto joined in 2019 as the first figure from games to be so named, and the award is bestowed by the Emperor himself. Past recipients include film director Akira Kurosawa and Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka, which says something about how rarely the honor is handed out. The Miyamoto Order of Culture listing also matters for what it says about the state's view of the medium: this is official recognition that game development belongs among the country's defining cultural achievements. Japanese media including the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Chugoku Shimbun reported the selection, according to Inven Global. The other recipients named this year include architect Toyo Ito and composer Shunichi Tokura, alongside researchers honored in the life sciences and chemistry.

The man behind the milestone

Miyamoto studied industrial design at Kanazawa College of Art before joining Nintendo in 1977. The franchises he went on to create include Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Pikmin, some of the most recognizable works in the history of entertainment. He has been decorated abroad before, receiving France's Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2006, but recognition at this level at home is new ground for the medium he helped build. Nintendo has since pulled him into its expansion beyond consoles, with his involvement in theme parks and animated films carrying the characters to audiences outside the console world.

Why it lands now

For developers, the selection is a signal from the state that game creation counts among the country's great cultural achievements, a shift that could echo through funding and preservation efforts. Players reacted about the way you would expect: in one widely upvoted comment, a fan summed up the announcement with four words, "well, who if not him." The Miyamoto Order of Culture is being framed as recognition for an entire industry's half-century climb, accepted by its most famous figure on behalf of everyone who helped. No industry award carries quite the weight of a state honor, and this one places games beside Japan's most established fields.

Reporting on the announcement comes from Automaton Media, which covered Miyamoto's Kyoto press conference, and Inven Global, which cited the Japanese dailies that first carried the government's decision. Both outlets note that the ceremony on Culture Day will make the honor formal, but the cultural verdict it represents is already settled.