Esports World Cup 2026 leaves Riyadh and moves to Paris

A festival with US$75 million in prizes has a new address less than seven weeks before its first match. The Esports World Cup Foundation confirmed on Wednesday, May 20, 2026 that the 2026 Esports World Cup moves from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Paris, France, HLTV reported that afternoon. The news site, which follows Counter-Strike, described the decision as a response to the ongoing conflict in Iran and said the business outlet GamesBeat had been first to report the move.

The Esports World Cup is a festival of tournaments: several weeks during which the best teams and players of some two dozen video games compete in the same city, with one prize fund. The 2026 edition is the third, TIME noted in April, and the first two were held in Riyadh. HLTV wrote that the relocation was largely welcomed as the event's first international chapter.

The foundation gave a first answer on the question teams ask before any other. Asked by HLTV whether the competitions themselves would change, a spokesperson replied within half an hour of the report.

What was confirmed on May 20

Three things are established. The host city changes, from Riyadh to Paris. The festival keeps its size: HLTV still describes a US$75 million event. And the content is not reopened. "All announced titles, tournaments, and competitive formats remain unchanged," the spokesperson said in the update HLTV added to its report at 6:15 pm, 27 minutes after publication.

Much is still to be announced. The Paris venues have not been named. The same spokesperson said the adjustments that follow from the change of host city, such as broadcast scheduling for European time zones and the operation of the new venues, would be communicated in the coming days.

How the decision came

The foundation had planned for Riyadh all year. On January 20, 2026 it announced the edition in a press release: seven weeks in the Saudi capital, from July 6 to August 23, with tickets on sale from January 22.

By spring the plan was under strain. On April 30, the magazine TIME published an interview with Ralf Reichert, the chief executive of the Esports World Cup Foundation, about the event, then scheduled to start in Riyadh on July 6. TIME reported that the conflict had disrupted sport in Saudi Arabia, where events including the Formula 1 race in Jeddah had been canceled or postponed. Reichert did not play down the effect on his own event. "It's definitely made our lives harder," he told TIME. He said people were more hesitant to book their travel, and that ticket sales had picked up since the ceasefire.

HLTV recalls that Reichert had publicly hoped, as late as the end of April, that the event could stay in Riyadh. In its report of May 20, the site wrote that the uncertain geopolitical climate in the Middle East ultimately forced the move.

The competition calendar did not wait. On May 17, HLTV reported that Lynn Vision had qualified for the Counter-Strike tournament by winning the Hero Esports Asian Champions League, a week-long event in Shanghai that the site described as the only regional qualifier for the Esports World Cup. The team beat JiJieHao 3-1 in the final and also took US$80,000 in prize money. At that date the relocation was a press report and nothing more, and HLTV noted that it was unclear what it would mean for the Counter-Strike competition. The confirmation came three days later.

The event that has to move

The size of what is being relocated is set out in the January press release. The 2026 edition counts 25 tournaments across 24 games, with several game championships running at the same time in different arenas. The foundation expects more than 2,000 players and about 200 clubs, the word it uses for esports organizations, from over 100 countries.

The list of games runs from Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends, Dota 2 and VALORANT to chess, and includes Rocket League, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, EA Sports FC 26, Street Fighter 6 and TEKKEN 8. Fortnite and Trackmania are the additions of the year.

Riyadh had hosted on that scale before. According to the same release, the 2025 edition and its festival drew more than 3 million visitors in the city, and the competitions reached 750 million viewers, with a peak of 7.98 million people watching at the same moment during the League of Legends tournament. Coverage went out on 28 platforms through 97 broadcast partners, on more than 800 channels and in 35 languages, which gives a measure of what the promised change of broadcast hours involves.

The foundation's statements, as HLTV reported them, concern the competitions. The January release sold weekly access passes, premium tournament passes and hospitality packages for Riyadh through several ticketing partners; the practical details of the new host city are among those promised for the coming days.

The money at stake

The US$75 million is not one prize but several. The January release divides it into three parts.

The Club Championship is what sets the event apart from a single-game tournament. Clubs earn points from their results in the different games, and a ranking across all of them decides the title. Its pool is US$3 million higher than in 2025, the foundation said, adding that last year's title was decided in the final week with seven clubs still in contention. Team Falcons won it last year, securing the title with four days to spare and US$7 million for first place, Sheep Esports reported in August 2025. The outlet set out the conditions: a club must finish in the top eight of at least two tournaments to be ranked, and must win at least one to take the title.

The Jafonso Award rewards players or clubs that win a game championship after coming through a Last Chance Qualifier, the final qualifying tournament of a game.

Clubs also plan around the event well ahead of it. On March 31 the foundation named the 40 organizations of its 2026 Club Partner Program, a US$20 million support scheme tied to the Esports World Cup. Reichert framed the prize fund in the same terms in January, saying it exists to support the players and the clubs that invest in them year after year.

What it means for Counter-Strike

HLTV's report looks at its own game first. The Counter-Strike 2 tournament is planned for August 12 to 23, the last two weeks of the festival. It has a US$2 million prize pool and 32 teams, double the number of the 2025 edition, and it is preceded by an open qualifier on LAN, meaning played in person at the venue and not online, for up to 128 teams.

For this game the move needed a second approval. Valve is the publisher of Counter-Strike 2, and organizers of its tournaments work to what HLTV calls the additional information deadline, which the site says falls ten months before a tier-one event. HLTV wrote on May 17 that relocating after that deadline would require an exception from Valve. On May 20 the site reported that the exception had been granted, on a request made nearly seven months after the deadline had passed.

Whether the Counter-Strike format would survive the move was unclear in HLTV's first version of the story. The spokesperson's reply settled it for every game at once.

The tournament has had two winners so far. NAVI won the first Counter-Strike 2 championship of the Esports World Cup, and The MongolZ won the 2025 edition, according to the foundation's own announcements.

The dates that are known

No new calendar has been published. The one in force is the calendar of January 20: an opening on July 6 and a last day on August 23, with the reservation the spokesperson made about a slight shift.

Some tournaments already have their own dates inside that window. The Rocket League competition is a 16-team event with a US$1 million prize pool, set for August 12 to 16, Esports Insider reported in February from the foundation's announcement. Its defending champion, invited directly, is the French club Karmine Corp. The Counter-Strike main event starts the same day, August 12, and closes the festival on August 23.

Paris is not the end of the foundation's plans in Saudi Arabia. TIME reported in April that the Esports Nations Cup, a separate competition in which countries and not clubs compete, launches in Riyadh in November.

For European viewers one change is already stated. Broadcast schedules are to be adapted to European time zones, the spokesperson told HLTV, with the details due along with the venues in the coming days.

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