Highlights
- $75M prize pool confirmed for EWC 2026, including $30M for the Club Championship.
- 25 tournaments across 24 games scheduled for July 6 to Aug. 23, 2026, in Riyadh.
- Tickets on sale from Jan. 22, 2026, with more than $39M in game prize pools.
The Esports World Cup (EWC) will return to Riyadh from July 6 through Aug. 23, 2026, with a total prize pool of $75 million USD, the Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF) announced on Jan 20. The seven-week event will feature 25 tournaments across 24 competitive titles, with more than 2K players and 200 Clubs from over 100 countries competing to crown the next Esports World Cup Club Champion.
The prize pool reflects the continued evolution of the Esports World Cup as a premier, multi-title esports event delivered at scale through an established cross-game format. Now entering its third year, the EWC is positioned as an anchor competition within the global esports ecosystem, aligning players, clubs, publishers, and fans under a shared competitive calendar.
“The life-changing prize pool exists to support the people at the heart of esports: the players and the Clubs that invest in them year after year,” said Ralf Reichert, CEO of the Esports World Cup Foundation. He stated that the EWC’s defining feature is the Club Championship, which crowns a single cross-game champion rather than a winner from one title.
In 2026, the EWC Club Championship will award $30M to the top 24 Clubs, marking a $3M year-on-year (YoY) increase. The winning Club will receive $7M, with increased prize allocations distributed across the remaining top finishing positions.
In the previous edition, the Club Championship title was decided in the final week of competition, with seven Clubs still in contention entering the closing stages.
Esports World Cup 2026 Prize Pool, Game Lineup, and Tickets
Beyond the Club Championship, Individual Game Championships will each carry their own prize pools, with combined allocations exceeding $39M. The remainder of the $75M total will be distributed through Club and Player Awards, including MVP (most valuable player) awards for each tournament and the Jafonso Award, which recognizes players or Clubs that win a Game Championship after advancing from a Last Chance Qualifier.
Additional prize allocations will also be delivered through qualifying events hosted by partnered publishers and organizers ahead of the EWC 2026 main event in Riyadh.
Alongside the prize pool, EWCF will continue to operate ecosystem support programs, including the EWCF Club Partner Program and the Road to EWC qualification system. The 2026 Club Partner Program will support 40 top global esports organizations, while publisher-led circuits, tournaments, and grassroots events will provide defined qualification pathways to the Esports World Cup.
The EWC 2026 competitive lineup includes 24 titles, with Fortnite and Trackmania joining the event as new additions:
- Apex Legends
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
- Call of Duty: Warzone
- Chess
- Counter-Strike 2
- Crossfire
- Dota 2
- EA Sports FC 26
- FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves
- Fortnite
- Free Fire
- Honor of Kings
- League of Legends
- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
- Overwatch 2
- PUBG: Battlegrounds
- PUBG Mobile
- Rocket League
- Street Fighter 6
- Teamfight Tactics
- TEKKEN 8
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege X
- Trackmania
- VALORANT
Competitions will be staged across seven weeks and multiple arenas, with several championships held in parallel across a coordinated, multi-venue schedule.
Tickets for EWC 2026 go on sale Jan 22, 2026, via esportsworldcup.com and international ticketing partners Webook, India, Damai, and Tixr. Early Bird options include Weekly Access Passes, Premium Tournament Passes, and Hospitality Packages for the Esports Embassy.
The announcement follows the Esports World Cup 2025, which reached 750M viewers worldwide, generated 350M hours watched, recorded peak concurrent viewership of 7.98M during the League of Legends tournament, and welcomed more than 3M visitors to Riyadh over the seven-week event.
