Esports World Cup-News, Predictions, and Rumors

The 2025 Esports World Cup will soon be underway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It’s quite a long event, running from July 8 all the way until August 24 of 2025, but it’s jam packed with an astounding variety of different Esports. There’s almost no way that one won’t find their niche in the upcoming event, with it featuring different twitch shooters, battle royale shooters, MOBAs, virtual sports, and even the odd professional chess match. If you’re a fan of gaming in any way, shape or form, you should probably stick around to see what’s on offer. There are already plenty of Esports World Cup picks and predictions out there, so people are obviously excited to see what’ll end up going down, but it’s important to get educated on the tournaments, games featured, and overall structure of the World Cup. Not to mention the news, rumors, and juicy drama surrounding it.

First held in 2023, the Esports World Cup (EWC) has been an annual set of tournaments all hosted one after the other to make for one grand super event. Pretty much the first of its kind (at least, at this scale), the EWC has attracted worldwide fame and prestige for those looking to get a taste of what Esports really has to offer. While not everyone has the time or resources to go there physically, you can still follow all of the happenings online on your favorite social media platforms, while trying to find the best Esports betting site to make some educated guesses on what might end up going down. Regardless of whether you plan to attend physically or virtually, this is probably an event that isn’t worth missing.

How will the Esports World Cup be structured?

The EWC has already released the way in which it will be structured, and it’s not too dissimilar to earlier years. It generally varies by game, but most of the games involve first having to complete regional tournaments in order to be given the green light to compete at the EWC itself. Once there, teams are free to compete in large scale competition against each other in order to see who will be crowned victorious. The exact style of tournament featured at the EWC varies from game to game, but they’re all fairly standard and can be easily followed along with.

The same organization (or “club”) is allowed to enter one team per Esport, and entering into more than one Esport is highly advised in order to be able to participate in the Club Championship. The club championship is the only competition in the EWC that’s held across multiple games, in that clubs compete in getting the best overall scores across all the games in which they compete. In order to qualify, a club has to finish in the top 8 in at least two competitions, and a club has to win in at least one game in order to have a shot at winning the entire Club Championship. The Club Championship itself has a separate $27 million prize pool, which will be split amongst the top 16 organizations in the Championship. The winning team will get to take home a cool $7 million, which for some teams can be life changing amounts of money that would be able to keep the club afloat for many years to come.

Taking a look at the individual games featured in the EWC

The 2025 Esports World Cup will feature 25 different games, so that’s where the bulk of time and words will be spent (and even then, there won’t be enough to cover every single one). Each and every game features its own unique premise, gameplay, and tournament format that are important to pay attention to if you’re trying to follow along, and even more so if you’re putting your own money on the line through Stake.com, as many will be.

While some outlets choose to explain the game in alphabetical order, the games here will instead be covered in chronological order, starting from the first that will be played and ending with the last to be played in mid to late August.

Valorant

One of three Esports to be hosted from the starting date of the 8th of July, Valorant has already seen play and will continue to until the 13th of July, during which the grand finals will be hosted to decide the winning team of the 2025 Valorant EWC tournament. If you feel that you might be late to the party to watch the tournaments, don’t fret! Both the Semifinals, third place match, and Grand Finals have yet to be played out, and those are generally regarded as some of the most entertaining matches of any tournament for obvious reasons. At the time of writing, the last Quarterfinal is yet to entirely play out, so one of the slots in the Semifinals is TBD, but the other three are populated by Fnatic, Paper Rex, and Gen.G Esports. By the time you’re reading this, the final slot will be filled by either Team Heretics or BBL Esports, so make sure to check!

Rennsport

A minor Rennsport tournament was played out from the 8th to the 11th, which is notable due to the fact that Rennsport isn’t yet released to the public for play. This tournament has provided a unique look at an unreleased game, and the game looks promising for its 2025 release.

Dota 2

One of the all time greats of Esports, Dota 2 boasts a more than impressive $3,000,000 prize pool, with 16 participating clubs in the tournament currently being hosted from July 8th all the way up to the 19th. The game isn’t the only one by Video Gaming giant Valve Corporation to feature at the EWC, but it is its biggest one to be featured in terms of prize pool and tournament length. If you have any interest in MOBAs or Dota 2 in particular, it’s a must watch!

Honor of Kings

If you haven’t heard of Honor of Kings before, don’t worry. The game is most popular in China, and China’s general online communities being distanced from the rest of the world means that general news about the game doesn’t travel far beyond the borders of the country. Still, it’s a big tournament with a $3,000,000 prize pool and 18 participating clubs, which will be hosted from the 10th of July up to the 26th.

Apex Legends

The Apex Legends tournament is being held from the 10th of July up until the 13th, making for quite a short tournament time wise. Regardless, 40 different participating clubs will be competing for a $2,000,000 prize pool. The fact that this many different clubs can participate in a tournament this short is unique to Battle Royale games, as they more or less follow the format of dropping every club onto the same map at once for audiences to watch everyone duke it out with each other. This also makes for what is essentially non stop action with no significant moments of downtime between periods of more hectic action.

League of Legends

League of Legends (LoL) is the largest esport of them all, and an event calling itself the “Esports World Cup” wouldn’t really be complete without it. Therefore, it is making an appearance and will feature a decently sized tournament from the 16th to the 20th of July, featuring a $2,000,000 prize pool and 12 clubs. League’s main claim to fame in Esports has always been Worlds, so it makes sense to not cannibalize their own largest tournament by outshowing it here. Still, an appearance is an appearance and League of Legends fans will be delighted to once again watch their favorite top teams duke it out against each other.

StarCraft II

While it’s far from the largest tournament to be featured in the World Cup, Starcraft II is being mentioned for being the only RTS game to make an appearance at it. While some claim that games like Dota possess RTS elements, Starcraft II is the only real full RTS experience to be played for the EWC. Featuring a $700,000 prize pool and 18 participating players, it will take place from the 22nd to the 25th of July, and will feature a standard upper and lower bracket tournament structure. It’s not Blizzard’s only game to see the EWC, but an argument can be made for it being the most unique (though Chess is entering into the cup this year). Released all the way in 2010, and with no sequel or continued major support currently in sight, it’s obvious that it’s not quite the freshest game, but it remains in our hearts as the last bastion of an older style of competitive gaming.

Chess

Quite the unique game to enter this year, Chess is far from what would traditionally be considered an Esport, since it’s typically played on a physical board as far as competitive settings go. However, it will be making an interesting appearance from the 29th of July to the 1st of August, with 16 players and a $1,500,000 prize pool. Magnus Carlsen, who is one of, if not the greatest, player to ever touch the game of chess, will act as an ambassador for the game to the EWC. He will be participating in the tournament himself, and so will other huge chess names such as Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who Magnus has previously praised as an important young talent developing in the sport of Chess. This is the first year in which Chess will be a participating Esport, and it will hopefully have some great success and even better moments from its appearance in the EWC.

Tekken 8

Being hosted from the 13th to the 16th of August, Tekken 8 is joined by Street Fighter 6 in representing the interesting genre of fighting games in the world of Esports. 32 different players will be playing for a $1,000,000 prize pool, so for gamers that like this particular genre of game, it’ll be quite the entertaining experience. Tekken itself has been embroiled in some drama over how it chose to rebalance its characters for the second competitive season of the game, so maybe Street Fighter would be more so the way to go for a more classic fighting game experience.

Counter Strike: 2

Counter Strike: 2 is Valve’s other game to be featured in the EWC, and it’s arguably as much of a gaming juggernaut as Dota. It features a $1,250,000 prize pool for the 16 clubs that will be competing for four days from the 20th of August to the 24th. While Counter Strike is an absolute giant in the world of gaming, it makes sense that it’s not an absolutely massive tournament. The major tournament in Austin recently just wrapped up, and the next one in Budapest isn’t far away, being hosted in December of this year.

Additional notes and controversy

One game that was initially planned to be hosted in the EWC is GeoGuessr, the popular country guessing online game that initially gained a huge amount of fame during the pandemic. GeoGuessr has since enjoyed a continued stream of popularity but opted out of the EWC in May 2025, just one week after it was announced to be participating in the tournament. The cited reasons include the broader sportswashing that the Saudi Government enjoys participating in, as well as the harsh but true point that a good bunch of the community are gay or otherwise part of the LGBT community. Many of them would possibly be persecuted in a country such as Saudi Arabia, where they would try to enter the tournament, and so the developers behind the game decided to opt out, stating, “You don’t play games with human rights". Sportswashing is an activity that the Saudi Arabian government is generally known for actively participating in, with plenty of resources and examples being easily found online. Still, the EWC will go on and host the rest of the games as planned.