The Esports World Cup is coming back to Riyadh in 2026, and it promises to be even bigger than last year.
The Saudi capital will host the world’s largest esports and gaming festival from July 6 to August 23, with players across 24 game titles and nearly every competitive genre.
The Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF), the organizers behind the event plan to build on last year’s event, which already achieved record-breaking viewing figures and prize pools.
On top of all this, four more games still to be revealed so fans are eagerly awaiting more news. Let’s take a closer look.
A global lineup
The confirmed titles read like a who’s who of competitive gaming. Returning favorites such as League of Legends, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike 2 sit alongside crowd-pullers like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Apex Legends, and Valorant.
Strategy fans get Teamfight Tactics and Chess, while fighting-game loyalists can look forward to Street Fighter 6 and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.
Each title has a loyal community, but together they represent an ecosystem built through long-standing partnerships with publishers like Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, Valve, and Tencent.
The goal, according to EWCF, is simple: gather every major esport under one global banner and celebrate them on equal footing.
That equality matters. Esports have long been fragmented across games and regions. EWC’s format (where clubs compete across multiple titles for cumulative points) pushes toward a unified competition model.
Instead of isolated tournaments, it’s now a full-season story that rewards those organizations that can sustain high-level gaming.
Riyadh’s growing role as esports capital
When Riyadh first hosted the Esports World Cup, the idea seemed bold. The organizers were, after all, positioning a Middle Eastern city as the world’s esports hub.
Three years later, that vision looks justified. The event now draws hundreds of teams, millions of online viewers, and tens of thousands of in-person attendees.
Saudi Arabia’s investment in gaming through its Vision 2030 strategy has turned the capital into a year-round esports destination. Global esports tournaments now have a home base, including training facilities and production studios. The city’s infrastructure is also well prepared for the visiting crowds.
For Riyadh, the World Cup is a signal of the region’s ambitions to diversify its entertainment economy. Organizers see gaming as both an export and a magnet for tourists and innovators.
Fan engagement beyond the live stage
The fan experience around EWC has grown in recent years, with extra entertainment offerings, including broadcasts, creator activations, side-shows and interactive content. Among these trends is the increasing interest in free-to-play reward-driven gaming experiences – for example, platforms that operate in a similar way to social sweepstakes casinos (where players can play free games, earn rewards and participate in prize-style engagements). The way fans want to engage with esports has changed, and these new extras give amateur players a chance to feel part of the competitive story.
We all know how much people love trying to win stuff, and these ideas tap into this impulse.
Clubs, champions, and a $70 million legacy
The EWC’s multi-game club championship format is one of its defining features. Organizations build teams across multiple titles, rather than just single rosters. They earn points across the season with the cumulative results determining who becomes champion.
In 2025, fans saw some amazing gaming stories, including cross-title rivalries and underdog heroes. Sky-high interest means the collective prize pool is now over $70 million and over 2,000 players from 100 countries will take part in front of viewers from 140 nations.
For 2026, new games are mixing things up, and mobile titles such as Free Fire, Honor of Kings, and PUBG Mobile mean regions like Southeast Asia and Latin America are represented – areas where mobile esports dominate.
Major players like Team Liquid, T1, and Team Falcons are already preparing rosters across multiple games, which shows just how much they value the EWC. They’re treating it like a full-scale competitive season that may impact them well beyond the summer.
The countdown to July 2026
If last year’s numbers are anything to go by (three million on-site visitors attended and 350 million hours watched online) EWC 2026 will be one of the major esports stories of the last few years.
Fans can expect world-class broadcast production, not to mention accessible international streams, and a schedule spread across eight weeks of non-stop competition.
New to this year’s edition is an expanded Nations Cup format, which will introduce country-based rivalries alongside the club championship. There’s also growing talk that the four unannounced titles will include at least one sports simulation and one battle royale, rounding out the lineup for maximum variety.
The Esports World Cup Foundation has described the event as “a global home for every gamer,” and in 2026 that vision looks closer to reality than ever.