Disney+ and KeSPA widen their deal to more Korean esports in 2026

Disney+ is taking on more Korean esports. On Monday, April 6, 2026, the streaming service announced an expanded collaboration with the Korea Esports Association, the national federation known as KeSPA, to livestream more of the association's competitions to audiences around the world. The release, published on the service's own press site, names three properties: Esports Championships Asia 2026 in Jinju, the 2026 LoL KeSPA Cup, and the send-off ceremony and warm-up matches of the South Korean national team before the 2026 Asian Games.

The agreement is a second step. Disney+ presents it as a follow-up to its livestream of the 2025 LoL KeSPA Cup, the association's League of Legends tournament, played last December. The first event of the new slate arrives in less than three weeks.

Properties, teams and titles: Disney+ release, April 6, 2026.

What Disney+ announced

The release opens with the reason for the expansion: what it calls the success of last year's KeSPA Cup livestream. From there it lists what the service will carry in 2026 and in what capacity, and the capacity is not the same for each event.

The first is Esports Championships Asia, held over three days in Jinju, South Korea, from April 24 to 26. Disney+ says it will livestream the event, and names four games in that coverage: Street Fighter 6, The King of Fighters XV, Tekken 8 and the eFootball series, the last played on both PC and mobile. For two more titles, PUBG Mobile and Eternal Return, the service describes itself as an official streamer with full tournament coverage.

The second is the 2026 LoL KeSPA Cup, which the release lists among the flagship events that will receive global live coverage. It gives no date for the tournament.

The third concerns the national team. Disney+ says it will exclusively livestream the send-off ceremony of the South Korean esports team and its evaluation matches, which the release schedules for later this year, in preparation for the 20th Asian Games in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan. The introduction of the release also mentions League of Legends friendly matches before the Games.

One more detail sets the tone of the broadcasts. ESPN, the sports network, will be featured on screen during the livestream and the event experience on Disney+, according to the release, which describes the result as a sports presentation. The service places the whole agreement within what it calls its growing slate of live programming, a list that runs from sports to news.

Seven nations in Jinju

Esports Championships Asia is a competition between national teams, not clubs. Seven countries send a delegation this year, according to the release: South Korea, China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Mongolia.

The release names six games for the three days. Three are fighting games, Street Fighter 6, The King of Fighters XV and Tekken 8; the fourth is the eFootball series, a soccer game. PUBG Mobile and Eternal Return complete the list. The release does not use the word exclusive for the Jinju event: it keeps it for the national team.

Reports of the announcement differ from the release on one name. The release writes PUBG Mobile, the version of the shooter played on phones. Korea JoongAng Daily, which reported the announcement the same day, and Dot Esports both write PUBG: Battlegrounds, the original game. All agree on Eternal Return as the sixth title.

The KeSPA Cup that started it

The agreement rests on one tournament. The 2025 LoL KeSPA Cup was played from December 6 to 14, 2025, according to the results page published by Sheep Esports on the day of the final. League of Legends is the five-against-five strategy game published by Riot Games, and the cup is the association's own competition in it. The LCK is the South Korean professional league. Sheep Esports described the 2025 edition as the tournament's tenth year, the first having been played in 2015.

Fourteen teams entered. All ten LCK squads took part, joined by two overseas all-star selections, from Japan and Vietnam, and by two invited teams from the LCS, the North American league: Cloud9 and Team Liquid. The group stage was a single round-robin of best-of-one matches, each decided in one game. Group winners advanced directly to the knockout stage and the runners-up went through a last-chance qualifier, with ties broken by average win time, the faster team taking the higher seed. The qualifier and the first two knockout rounds were best-of-three series, won by the first team to take two games. The final was a best-of-five, won by the first team to take three games, and T1 beat Hanwha Life Esports 3-2 for what Sheep Esports called the club's first KeSPA Cup title.

Sheep Esports noted at the time that matches of the cup were broadcast on Disney+ in the United States. Korea JoongAng Daily and Dot Esports, in their reports of this week's announcement, describe the 2025 livestream as exclusive to the service, and Dot Esports adds that it was shown on Disney+ in several Asia-Pacific markets, among them South Korea, Japan and Australia. Disney+ has published no audience figure for it: the release speaks of success without a number.

The cup also carries weight beyond its own trophy. Sheep Esports reported in December that its results would be used to assess players for the national team, and that only players who competed in it would be eligible for selection for the 2026 Asian Games.

A national team to follow before the Asian Games

That link explains the third part of the agreement. The 20th Asian Games take place in Aichi and Nagoya from September 19 to October 4, 2026, and esports is on the program as a medal sport. The Olympic Council of Asia, which owns the Games, approved 11 esports titles on February 22, 2025, at an online meeting of its executive board. Esports had been a demonstration sport at the 2018 Games in Jakarta and Palembang, the council recalled, and a full medal sport with seven titles in Hangzhou in 2023.

Several of the Jinju games appear on that list in one form or another. The council's program includes a team event it calls Competitive Martial Arts, which groups the Street Fighter, Tekken and King of Fighters series and awards one medal, as well as the eFootball series and an Asian Games version of PUBG Mobile. League of Legends is on the list too, beside Pokemon Unite, Honor of Kings, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Identity V, Naraka: Bladepoint, Gran Turismo 7 and Puyo Puyo Champions. Eternal Return is not. The release says as much in its own words: it presents Esports Championships Asia as an important platform for national teams to assess their performance ahead of the Games.

South Korea has already begun to build its delegation. On February 12, 2026, KeSPA announced four national team coaches, among them Kang Dong-hoon for League of Legends, as the South Korean technology daily Digital Daily reported that day. The same report said the association plans to select 37 players in all. Players of League of Legends and PUBG Mobile are called up from their clubs, while the other titles hold selection competitions.

The evaluation matches Disney+ will show belong to that preparation. The release gives no date, opponent or game for them beyond the mention of League of Legends friendlies, and no date for the send-off ceremony, the event at which a delegation is presented before it leaves for the Games.

What each side says it gains

The release frames the deal as an addition to the service's live offer, built so far on sports, news and cultural events, and promises more esports coverage through the year. Esports enters that offer through a federation, with national teams and an association cup, and not through a publisher's league.

For the association, the stated benefit is reach. Kim So-yeon, who heads The Walt Disney Company Korea and its direct-to-consumer business, said in remarks carried by Korea JoongAng Daily that the company hopes the collaboration will help promote the value of Korean esports around the world.

The release quotes nobody from KeSPA, and it does not say how the production is shared between the association and the service.

The dates already set

The calendar that follows from the announcement has two fixed points and several open ones.

The Jinju event opens on a Friday and ends on a Sunday. The release does not place the 2026 LoL KeSPA Cup on the calendar; the 2025 edition was played in the first half of December. Nor does it say who will show the esports events of the Asian Games themselves: the agreement, as announced, stops at the team's preparation.

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