Esports World Cup in Paris keeps Qiddiya City and adds a host-city partner

The Esports World Cup opens its first edition outside Riyadh with a familiar name at its center and a new one beside it. In a release published on July 6, 2026, the Esports Foundation confirmed Qiddiya City, the Saudi entertainment and gaming city being developed near Riyadh, as Founding Partner of the event and naming-rights partner of one of its four competition stages in Paris, the Qiddiya City Grid.

A day later, on July 7, Dot Esports reported two further partners announced by the foundation: Paris je t'aime, the City of Paris's official tourism board, as host-city partner, and the French production company OTP as an official broadcaster. No financial terms or durations were disclosed for any of the three agreements.

Esports Foundation release on Qiddiya City, July 6, 2026.

A World Cup that changed cities

The partners join an event that was planned for another city in January. On January 20, 2026, the Esports Foundation announced the 2026 edition for Riyadh, from July 6 to August 23, with a US$75 million prize fund spread over 25 tournaments in 24 games. On May 20 the foundation confirmed that the event would move to Paris, keeping its titles and formats.

On May 27 it named its home: Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, an exhibition center in the city that has hosted Paris Games Week since 2010 and was the largest venue of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and which also hosted the 2025 TFT Open. The foundation's release said the site would hold the competition arenas, the broadcast operations and the fan festival, over seven weeks of competition with more than 2,000 players from more than 200 clubs in over 100 countries. The schedule it published that day lists 28 entries for its 25 competitions, since some tournaments are split into two weeks. Tickets went on sale on May 29.

The partner announcements of the first week of July set out who sponsors the Paris edition at its opening: a Saudi founding partner that stays, and a French city brand and a French broadcaster that join.

Qiddiya City keeps its founding role

Qiddiya City stays, and takes a stage. The foundation's July 6 release describes the agreement as an expansion of a long-term collaboration between the Esports Foundation and Qiddiya Investment Company, the company developing the city. Qiddiya City remains a Founding Partner of the Esports World Cup.

The most visible part of the deal is in the venue. Qiddiya City holds the naming rights to one of the four competition stages, called the Qiddiya City Grid, which seats more than 1,000 spectators. Six games are played on it, according to the release: Apex Legends, Free Fire, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Call of Duty: Warzone, PUBG Mobile and Fortnite. The release also mentions a new brand campaign, a visual identity and a campaign film tied to the partnership.

All six are battle royales, games in which many teams play the same match at once and the last one standing wins. Their dates keep the stage in use from the first week of the event to the last, with the Fortnite championship closing its schedule the day before the event ends.

The partnership is not new to the Esports World Cup. The release recalls that in 2025, in Riyadh, the Qiddiya Arena drew more than 42,000 visitors and the PlayLife activation a further 216,000, alongside a campaign across the Middle East and China.

What Qiddiya City is

Qiddiya City is a development in the Tuwaiq Mountains, about 45 kilometers from Riyadh, a drive of about 40 minutes, covering more than 360 square kilometers, according to the foundation's release. Its plans include esports facilities covering more than 183,100 square meters, with four purpose-built esports arenas holding 73,000 seats in all, facilities for up to 25 esports clubs and regional headquarters for more than 30 gaming companies.

The same release lists the city's other planned venues: a soccer and multi-purpose stadium, a championship golf course, a motorsport venue with a racetrack, a water park and a Six Flags theme park. It gives no opening dates for the esports district.

The city's owners are already present elsewhere in competitive gaming. In February, The Esports Advocate reported that NODWIN Gaming had sold its stake in Evo, the fighting game championship series, to RTS, a company owned by Qiddiya, leaving Evo fully owned by RTS.

Paris je t'aime as host-city partner

Paris je t'aime is the brand of the City of Paris's tourism office and convention bureau, and it joins the Esports World Cup as host-city partner. Dot Esports, reporting the foundation's announcement, described the deal as bringing one of the world's best-known city tourism brands into esports in a formal host-city role for the first time. The claim is Dot Esports' own; no terms of the partnership were published.

Paris je t'aime was already working on esports before this deal. On May 16, 2023, the City of Paris and Paris je t'aime set up a taskforce on hosting major esports events, with Paris je t'aime mandated by the city to coordinate it. The tourism office's own account of the launch lists its members: the teams of three deputy mayors, Pénélope Komitès for innovation and attractiveness, Frédéric Hocquard for tourism and nightlife, and Pierre Rabadan for sport, the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Seine; the large event venues Viparis, GL events and Accor Arena; and support from Paris&Co, France eSport and the French video game publishers' association. Its stated aims were to make Paris a leading esports destination, to become the European reference for esports within five years, and to support bids for flagship events, from venues and player stays to fan zones. The taskforce also set out to mobilize local and national partners, to favor responsible and sustainable tournaments, to leave a positive and inclusive legacy for the city, and to write these commitments into a charter modeled on the one the city already applies to major events.

The same account lists the events the city had already received: League of Legends in 2019 and a Counter-Strike Major played from May 8 to 21, 2023, with a prize pool of more than €1 million, whose final was sold out with 12,000 spectators and won by Team Vitality. This season Paris also hosted the Rocket League Major in May, won by Karmine Corp on May 24 according to Psyonix. Viparis, one of the venue groups in the taskforce, is also the name under which Dot Esports groups the venues of this summer's competition.

OTP joins as a broadcaster

The third partner brings French-language coverage. OTP, or One Trick Production, was co-founded by the casters Chips and Noi and is described by Dot Esports as the leading French-language broadcaster of League of Legends. It becomes an official broadcaster of the Esports World Cup and covers the event live and on site on its own channels from July 8 to August 9, with League of Legends, Valorant and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 among its titles. Dot Esports adds that OTP generated €2.2 million in revenue in the 14 months after its launch in December 2020, and that the full details of its coverage were to be given in a livestream on July 8. That window is OTP's own: the event as a whole runs until August 23. The same report notes that France Televisions, the French public broadcaster, is to air a daily Esports World Cup program on national television, a separate arrangement from OTP's.

The opening and what follows

The calendar starts now. Dot Esports reported that the opening ceremony takes place on July 8 at La Seine Musicale, with DJ Snake and Aya Nakamura as headliners and the French artist Theodora. The foundation's schedule of May 27 set the first matches for July 7, with the Apex Legends playoffs and the Dota 2 tournament, followed by Valorant from July 9 to 12 and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves from July 8 to 11.

Alongside the matches, the Esports World Cup Festival runs for seven weeks at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, with cosplay, club houses, game demos and meetings with creators, Dot Esports reported. The last tournaments of the Qiddiya City Grid end on August 22, and the event closes on August 23.

For Qiddiya City, the next dates are on its own stage: Free Fire from July 15, PUBG: Battlegrounds from July 21 and Call of Duty: Warzone from July 30. OTP's coverage runs on its channels until August 9.

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