Garena's bookings rose 5.9% in the third quarter, the slowest growth of its three quarters in 2026

Sea Limited said on November 10, 2026, that bookings at Garena, its games developer and publisher, rose 5.9% from a year earlier to $890.0 million in the third quarter. That is the slowest growth of the three quarters reported so far this year, after increases of 20.1% in the first quarter and 15.5% in the second. Sea, which was founded in Singapore and also runs the Shopee e-commerce platform and the Monee digital finance business, uses bookings as an approximation of what players spend on Garena in a period.

The player base barely moved. Quarterly active users were 671.7 million, against 670.8 million a year earlier. Quarterly paying users rose 4.1% to 68.6 million, which put the paying ratio at 10.2%, up from 9.8%, and average bookings per user rose to $1.33 from $1.25.

Chairman and chief executive Forrest Li said Free Fire “anchored this performance with strong bookings growth,” and that Arena of Valor kept up “its strong momentum from its 10th year anniversary celebrations.”

Five quarters of Garena

The first quarter was the high point. Li called it Garena's best quarter since 2021, citing Free Fire and a record contribution from Arena of Valor. In August, he said Free Fire was drawing more than 100 million average daily active users. The comparison base for the latest quarter was also high: Sea reported bookings of $840.7 million for the third quarter of 2025, up 51.1%, and Li called that Garena's best quarter since 2021 at the time. That was more than in the fourth quarter of 2025 or the second quarter of 2026. Over the first nine months of 2026, Garena's bookings came to about $2.58 billion (our calculation).

Why revenue grew faster than bookings

Garena's GAAP revenue rose 28.6% to $840.1 million, far ahead of bookings. Because Sea defines bookings as revenue plus the change in Garena's deferred revenue, the gap reflects deferrals: the change in deferred revenue was $49.9 million in the quarter, against $187.6 million a year earlier. Sea itself attributes the revenue rise to a larger active user base and deeper paying-user penetration.

Garena's Adjusted EBITDA, which Sea now calculates without the net effect of changes in deferred revenue and related costs, rose 45.9% to $458.2 million. Sea reports that effect separately, at $52.0 million against $151.9 million a year earlier. Garena brought in 9.8% of Sea's $8.6 billion of revenue in the quarter (our calculation), yet its Adjusted EBITDA was larger than Shopee's $269.2 million or Monee's $298.3 million.

New games and buybacks

In its second-quarter release, Sea said Garena was working to diversify its portfolio with two announced mobile games based on well-known franchises, Palworld Online and Monster Hunter Outlanders. The third-quarter release does not mention either title. For the group as a whole, revenue rose 43.4% and net income 34.0% to $502.5 million, and the board approved another $1.0 billion of share repurchases on November 9.

Related: our report on Roblox's third quarter.