G2 opens a Performance Lab to study how esports players are developed

G2 Esports announced on June 5, 2026 the G2 Performance Lab, a research platform that places scientists inside its teams to study how professional players train, are coached and stay well. The club published the announcement on its own site, and The Esports Advocate reported it the same day. The lab is backed by Red Bull, a partner of the club since 2019, and works with two universities.

The promise goes beyond the club's own results. G2 says the lab is meant to produce best practices for the performance and the well-being of its teams, and to share what it finds with the rest of the industry through scientific publications. The amount Red Bull puts in and the length of its commitment were not disclosed.

What G2 announced

The announcement describes a platform that combines scientific research with practical performance work. According to G2, the lab was launched earlier in 2026. Its method is to embed what the club calls scientist-practitioners, together with researchers, directly within G2's teams. The lab monitors the psychological, motor and physiological dimensions of performance, the club writes, and builds plans tailored to each case.

G2 calls the approach holistic and ecological: it considers every aspect of the environment around a competitor. The stated aim is a more sustainable future, centered on performance, for elite players, coaches and support staff.

The Esports Advocate, which covers the business of esports, summed up the fields of work as performance development, athlete wellbeing, coaching, training design and support systems across the club's elite rosters. Its report notes that the announcement names no specific team and no game.

The lab is led by Ismael Pedraza-Ramirez, who carries the titles of Performance Lab Director and performance coach at G2. In the club's announcement he said, in substance, that little is known about how to develop elite players into world-class competitors, and that the lab intends to change that with Red Bull's support.

Four pillars and a first project

The work is organized in four areas that G2 calls pillars: coaching and coach development, training design and delivery, player development, and performance health and support systems. The announcement lists them without detail.

Only one project is presented in the announcement. It is called A Space for Leaders and belongs to the coaching pillar. G2 describes it as work on leadership development across the club's staff, through research and collaborative learning. The first subject of a lab created to develop players is therefore the people who lead them.

The other pillars have projects planned for 2026 and led by academic contributors, the club says, without naming or describing them.

A commitment to publish

One point sets the project apart from performance work that stays inside a club. G2 commits to sharing. The announcement speaks of scientific publications and academic work, and The Esports Advocate reports that G2 expects publications in the near future, with no date given for the first findings.

Two universities and the research behind the lab

Two academic institutions are named. The German Sport University Cologne is presented as the partner for publications and academic work, and its academic contributors lead projects of 2026. The Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a university in Brussels, is named for contributors to those projects as well.

The director comes from that world. G2's announcement presents Pedraza-Ramirez as a PhD candidate, and the research register of the German Sport University Cologne lists him as a doctoral student of its Institute of Psychology, in the section for performance psychology. The Esports Advocate, citing public research records, writes that he has contributed to work on esports psychology, coaching and mental health in competitive gaming, including research affiliated with the German Sport University Cologne and with G2. He co-authored a paper on mental health in esports in 2024, the outlet adds, which argued that competitive players face health challenges that are not addressed enough and called for more applied initiatives and more research.

The vocabulary of the announcement is the vocabulary of that research. The university's register lists a case study he co-authored in 2024 in the journal Case Studies in Sport and Exercise Psychology, whose title describes a holistic ecological approach to talent development in elite esports, the same two adjectives G2 uses for its lab. The register also lists three papers of 2025 that bear his name: a study of how expert players and coaches perceive decision-making in esports, a paper on the trends and challenges of esports psychology, and a study of the mental health status of esports athletes.

What Red Bull brings

Red Bull is described by G2 as a long-standing partner that supported the launch of the lab and the vision behind it. The club's chief executive, Alban Dechelotte, said in the announcement that Red Bull had played a central role in supporting the vision behind the lab.

The two have worked together for years. G2 announced a multi-year partnership with Red Bull in 2019, The Esports Advocate recalls, itself an extension of earlier work around Red Bull Racing, and Red Bull is listed today among the partners on the club's site. The outlet adds that Red Bull runs an Athlete Performance Center, which presents itself as a global performance accelerator for professional athletes and teams, and that its activity in esports includes competitive events, team partnerships and content about player performance.

Which teams are concerned

The announcement speaks of G2's teams in general and names none, and it names no game. Its headline goes one step further than its text and speaks of esports and sports athletes. Traditional sports appear in the closing presentation of the club, which recalls its entry into the Kings League.

Several of the club's rosters were in the middle of their season. The announcement came during the IEM Cologne Major, the Counter-Strike 2 championship played from June 2 to 21, for which G2 had registered a line-up. Masters London, the international Valorant tournament that Riot Games organizes at the Copper Box Arena from June 6 to 21, lists G2 among its twelve teams. In League of Legends, G2 represented the LEC at First Stand in March and stood third in Riot's Global Power Rankings published on March 23.

What the players themselves will be asked to do is not set out. The announcement mentions monitoring and tailored development plans, and gives no schedule, no number of participants and no list of the measures taken.

A club that keeps adding activities

The lab arrives at a club that has widened its field since 2025. G2 presents itself as a pioneer of esports for more than a decade. Its news page dates its first entry into traditional sports to April 2, 2025, with the launch of G2 Football Club in Kings League Germany, a competition G2 ties to the former footballer Gerard Piqué.

Thirteen days earlier it had closed a Series B funding round, the second stage of outside investment in a company. The Esports Advocate reported on March 20, 2025 that the round was led by WISE Ventures, the investment arm of the Wilf family, owners of the Minnesota Vikings of the NFL, that the club described the sum as seven figures without publishing it, and that Dechelotte said at the time the business had been profitable for multiple years. The money was to serve global expansion, new game titles and direct-to-fan experiences, the club said then. The outlet described G2 as an international organization based in Berlin, then in its tenth anniversary year.

The same news page shows the pace of 2026. On January 6 the club announced G2 NORD, launched with NORD Esports. On April 8 it presented G2 EVA, which it calls a mixed VR squad, a team for virtual reality competition. On May 19 it announced a partnership with McDonald's Germany aimed at emerging talent and women in esports.

That last announcement concerns the development of players as well. G2 NORD is the club's League of Legends academy team. It plays in the Prime League, the German competition, and G2 writes that it won the Prime League Winter Snowdown and reached the playoffs of its first EMEA Masters. The club presents the team as a pathway for new players into top-level competition. The same partnership pays for the return of G2 Hel, a women's League of Legends team, which is to play in the Game Changers circuit. The announcement of the lab does not say whether its work extends to these two rosters.

For the lab, the next milestones are the ones G2 has named itself: the projects of 2026 under each pillar, and the first publications. The club has attached no date to either.

The .esports registry publishes Esports Observer, so the whole scene can read its news for free.