Tracker counts 28 closures and cuts in US college esports since 2022

The Esports Advocate has started keeping a public record of college esports programs that close or shrink in the United States. Its College Esports Program Closures and Cuts Tracker, published on October 8, 2026, counts 28 entries at 26 schools since 2022, from varsity teams turned into clubs to whole universities that shut while they still ran an esports program.

The publication sums up its own finding in one line: collegiate esports is contracting. The tracker sets out each change it can source, with the date it was announced or reported, what the school said and where it was reported. It covers US colleges and universities only for now.

The Esports Advocate, College Esports Program Closures and Cuts Tracker, published October 8, 2026.

What the tracker counts

The tracker sorts every change into one of eight types. A program can be closed outright, or a varsity team can be cut back to club status, a step below varsity competition. A school can drop one game title while keeping the others, cut scholarships, cut the budget, or move the program to another department. The tracker also logs a program restored after a cut, and a school that closed altogether while it ran esports.

The table below gives the totals the tracker published on October 8.

The largest group is not a decision about esports at all. In nine of the 28 entries, the program ended because the school itself was closing. Program closures in the narrow sense, where a school that stays open ends its esports team, account for five entries. Cuts to club status account for six.

There are more entries than schools because two schools appear twice, each time for two separate changes logged on different dates.

Two universities that closed in 2026

Two of this year's entries are schools that announced their closure in the spring semester.

Lourdes University in Ohio announced on February 11, 2026, with the Sisters of St. Francis of Sylvania, the Franciscan order that owns most of its buildings, that it would close at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. The Sisters gave finances and enrollment as the reasons, and said that after months of effort they had concluded there was no way forward for the university. More than 200 students had applied to graduate, and special classes and sessions were being arranged so they could finish. The Sisters, who will keep living on the campus, said they were discerning the future use of the property. The announcement does not mention athletics. According to the tracker, the closure ended the university's athletics department, including an esports program that offered scholarships.

Anna Maria College in Massachusetts announced on April 23, 2026, according to the tracker, that it would end its academic offerings at the close of the spring 2026 semester. The college's own website now states that it ceased academic operations at the end of that semester, and that the college has filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11, a decision its Board of Trustees took after consulting legal counsel, independent accountants and its bondholder. The tracker notes that the closure announcement did not mention athletics or esports. The college's site now points former students to a page of frequently asked questions and transfer pathways, and to transcript requests.

The esports program at Anna Maria had a strong record. A college article published on March 27, 2026, as the team entered its third year, counted six conference championships since the program began and a national championship in Rainbow Six Siege in its debut season. The team competed in the Eastern College Athletic Conference, known as the ECAC, and the East Coast Conference, and the article listed a Director of Esports and a graduate assistant as its staff.

When the entries were announced

The tracker does not publish a total per year, but each row carries the date the change was announced or reported. Counted by those dates, the record is uneven. One entry dates from 2022, five from 2023 and three from 2024. Fifteen are dated 2025, more than half of the 28. Four are dated 2026, up to the tracker's publication on October 8.

School closings run through the whole period: one in 2022, two in 2023, one in 2024, three in 2025 and two in 2026. The smaller types gather in 2025. Both budget cuts, the only scholarship cut, the only move to another department and the only restoration are dated that year, as are three of the five program closures and two of the three dropped titles.

Beyond the two school closures described above, the 2026 rows hold one program closure and one cut to club status, both at universities that remain open.

The record also flags one kind of edge case. Where a school describes a change in other words than the tracker's classification, for instance calling the end of a program a suspension, the row says so.

How the record is built

The tracker gives each row at least one source, preferably the school's own announcement, otherwise student newspapers or other reporting, and labels each source as primary, student press or secondary. Quoted passages are checked against the source page or an archived copy. A date is printed only to the precision the source allows, which is why some entries show a month or a season rather than a day.

The publication says that cuts it has not found may exist, and invites corrections. The totals are therefore a count of what has been reported and sourced, not a census of every program in the country. The tracker does not set its count against the number of programs that exist.

That point matters for scale. The National Association of Collegiate Esports, known as NACE, the largest association of varsity programs in North America by its own description, counted more than 150 member schools and over 4,000 student-athletes in February 2026, when it announced its Spring 2026 Grand Finals at Full Sail University. Those finals, set for April 23 to 26, were planned for 48 varsity teams across six titles: League of Legends, Valorant, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Overwatch, Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

A new varsity program in South Texas

The tracker records departures, but schools are still joining. Texas A&M University-Kingsville announced in late August 2026 that esports would become its newest varsity sports program, in a release dated August 25 on the university's news site, announcing a decision of its athletics department, Javelina Athletics.

The program is to be housed under the university's recreational sports department, led by Marcus Wirth as Rec Sports Director, with oversight from Michael Salinas, the Executive Director of Athletics. The team will start competing in NACE in spring 2027, in a variety of titles the university has not yet named. Its first head coach will be chosen after a national search.

Dr. Robert Vela, the university's president, said the decision followed strong interest from students in playing esports at the varsity level, and that the skills it involves, such as communication, teamwork and strategic thinking, also support success in the classroom and at work. Wirth said varsity status sets the university apart from other South Texas institutions and can attract local talent, and that the aim is a highly competitive program, and the release sets the goal of making Javelina Esports a leading program in South Texas. The announcement gives no figures for facilities, scholarships or budget.

The structure is shared between two departments: the team is housed in recreational sports, while it carries varsity status and is overseen by the athletics director. NACE sets conditions of its own: Riley Long, its executive director, said in February that the Spring Grand Finals reinforced the association's eligibility standards and in-person play requirements.

Varsity status carries conditions in publisher programs too. When Blizzard Entertainment relaunched Overwatch Collegiate with NACE for the 2025-26 school year, Esports Insider reported on August 5, 2025, its Varsity division was limited to NACE member schools, one team per school, and varsity eligibility required dedicated facilities on campus and oversight by the institution. An Open division remained available to all eligible schools in the United States and Canada.

What comes next

For the schools in the tracker, most changes have already taken effect: the 2026 closures at Lourdes and Anna Maria were set for the end of the 2025-26 academic year and the spring 2026 semester. The tracker is a living page: The Esports Advocate published it with a last update on October 8, 2026, and its count stands at that date.

At Texas A&M University-Kingsville, the next step announced is the appointment of a head coach, ahead of the program's first NACE season in spring 2027.

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