Warwick named NSE Esports University of the Year for an eighth time

The University of Warwick has done it again. National Student Esports, the organization behind the British University Esports Championship, named Warwick its Esports University of the Year for 2025/2026 on April 28, 2026, the eighth year in a row the university has finished on top.

Warwick closed the season with 3,852 points, almost 500 more than a year earlier, according to NSE. The margin hides a closer contest than the final number suggests: the University of Southampton finished ahead of Warwick in the Winter split, the first half of the academic year, before Warwick recovered in the Spring split to keep its crown. In all, 117 universities took part.

National Student Esports, Esports University of the Year 2025/2026, published April 28, 2026.

What NSE announced

The Esports University of the Year is the overall table of British university esports. It adds up the points every university earns across the season's competitions, in every game, and ranks the institutions on the total. NSE published the 2025/2026 table after the Spring Finals of the championship, known as the BUEC, which NSE describes as the official esports competition of British universities.

Behind Warwick, the University of Southampton finished second and King's College London third. University College London was fourth, its highest finish ever, and the University of Portsmouth fifth. The University of Manchester missed the top five by nine points and finished sixth.

Loughborough University came seventh, back in the top ten for the first time since 2022. Universities from Nottingham took eighth and ninth, and Cardiff University completed the top ten as the only university from outside England. Two seasons earlier, NSE had hailed Swansea's second place as the first time a university from outside England reached the top five.

How the Winter split set up the race

The first half of the season ended with Warwick in an unfamiliar place. When NSE closed the BUEC Winter 2025 split on December 16, 2025, the University of Southampton led the points table, with Warwick second, 41 points behind. It was the first time Southampton had topped the Winter table, NSE said, after seven years with Warwick on top.

University College London finished that split third, its first podium, up from 29th the Winter before, with King's College London fourth, seven points behind it. Nottingham Trent University climbed 11 places to fifth. NSE counted 113 universities in the Winter split, eight of them new that year, and noted that the Esports University of the Year would be decided by the end of Spring 2026.

In the Winter split, Southampton topped the points in Valorant with 460, in Overwatch 2 with 355 and in Rocket League with 313, while Warwick led League of Legends with 477. Over the Spring split, Warwick overturned that 41-point deficit and finished the season first on 3,852.

How a year of points was won

The 3,852 points compare with 3,372 a year earlier and 3,669 in 2023/2024, when Warwick took its sixth title in a field of 113 universities. The 3,852 points are therefore the highest of Warwick's last three winning totals. Its 2024/2025 total of 3,372 came when NSE named Warwick Esports University of the Year 2024/2025 on April 10, 2025 for a seventh consecutive time. The gain of 480 points is the rise NSE described as almost 500. That previous season, NSE noted, the gap between first and second place had shrunk by almost 400 points.

Points come from depth as much as from trophies. In League of Legends, Warwick earned the most points of any university, 906, from nine teams, even though its best team finished 13th. Its six Rocket League teams brought in 566 points, with a best placement of third.

The four titles in the chart account for 2,467 of Warwick's 3,852 points, or about 64 percent; the rest came from Warwick's teams in the other games of the season. Warwick had the highest points total of any university in all four: League of Legends, Overwatch, Rocket League and Teamfight Tactics.

The race behind Warwick

The 2025/2026 top ten looks very different from the ones before it. Only Warwick held its place from a year earlier; most of the rest of the top of the table moved by several places.

King's College London made the longest climb inside the top ten, seven places from tenth to third. Southampton's second place followed its win in the Winter split. Swansea University, third a year earlier, and the University of the West of England, fifth, both fell out of the top ten in 2025/2026.

Lower down the table, Brunel University rose 30 places, from 72nd to 42nd. Northumbria University climbed from 74th to 49th, the University of the West of Scotland from 114th to 85th and Dundee and Angus College from 98th to 77th. Essex, Brighton and Newcastle and Stafford Colleges each rose 16 places.

The field held at 117 universities, the same number NSE called a record a year earlier and up from 113 in 2023/2024. NSE counted five first-time entrants, among them Norwich University of the Arts, Arts University Bournemouth, Arts University Plymouth and St Mary's University. The 2024/2025 season had brought ten newcomers.

NSE also names a champion for each part of the country. In 2025/2026, the University of Abertay Dundee topped Scotland, Cardiff University Wales and Queen's University Belfast Northern Ireland. In England, the table was split into regions: the University of Southampton won the South, Warwick the Midlands, the University of Manchester the North, and King's College London took London. Two of the national titles changed hands. Scotland had gone to the University of Edinburgh and Wales to Swansea University in both 2023/2024 and 2024/2025, while Queen's University Belfast and King's College London kept the titles they had held in each of those seasons.

Streaks and upsets in the games

The table also tracks the strongest university teams game by game. In Rainbow Six Siege X, the University of the West of England had the top points total, 388 from three teams, and its Gatekeepers team won the title for a fifth time in a row. A year earlier, NSE had counted three straight Rainbow Six Siege titles for the same team.

Imperial Esports, the team of Imperial College London, won its fourth League of Legends title, according to NSE. In Rocket League, the University of Liverpool beat Roehampton Esports in the Spring Finals. It was Roehampton's first defeat since Spring 2024. In April 2025, NSE had recorded the University of Roehampton's team winning a fourth Rocket League title in a row, and in December 2025 it said the team held the BUEC record of 68 consecutive wins over three seasons, its last loss having come on March 17, 2024.

The Winter split had already crowned its own champions: Oxford Orangutans of the University of Oxford in League of Legends, the University of Exeter in Counter-Strike 2, QMUL Aces of Queen Mary University of London in Valorant, and the University of Strathclyde in Overwatch 2, alongside Gatekeepers in Rainbow Six Siege X and Roehampton Esports in Rocket League.

Over the full season, other titles had their own leaders on points. Southampton led Valorant with 799, University College London led Counter-Strike 2 with 520, the University of York led Apex Legends with 385 and Loughborough led Marvel Rivals with 349. Portsmouth topped Splatoon 3 with 157, and Nottingham Trent led University Fighting Games, NSE's fighting game competition, with 30.

Who runs British university esports

National Student Esports was formed in 2017 through a partnership between BUCS and Benchmark, which NSE describes as a group company with a twenty-year track record. NSE calls itself the official body of university esports in the UK through that partnership. In the 2024/2025 academic year, it said, more than 2,200 teams from 117 universities competed. Its community platform creates more than 12,000 verified student accounts each year, and it runs a career program, NSE Careers Boost, that connects employers and universities with its students.

Its championship runs in two splits, Winter and Spring, and NSE also runs a summer season. NSE lists Nintendo, Riot Games, Ubisoft and HoYoverse among its publisher partners, and affiliate leagues in sim racing, fighting games, Halo and Call of Duty. In its 2025/2026 announcement, it thanked BUCS, Vita Student and Pot Noodle as partners of the season.

What comes next

With the Spring split over, NSE's next step is the summer season, with sign-ups expected at the beginning of June, according to the announcement.

Counted back from 2025/2026, Warwick's eight straight titles cover every season since 2018/2019. Southampton, which beat it over the Winter split, and King's College London, which won London again, finish the year as its nearest challengers in the table.

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