PUBG Mobile World Cup 2026: devices, network and remake rules explained

On a phone, a battle royale is decided in fractions of a second, and the device in a player's hands is part of the result. A screen that stutters, a connection that drops during the landing or an earpiece that cuts out in a firefight can cost a team a match that pays out points and money. That is why the rules of a mobile tournament spend so much time on hardware, network and what happens when something breaks.

The PUBG Mobile World Cup at the Esports World Cup 2026 has its rules in a Player Handbook, version 1.0, dated July 29, 2026. The competition runs from August 6 to 16, 2026, and the handbook's own schedule has teams arriving in Paris on August 3 and leaving on August 17. It covers 32 teams, a US$3 million prize pool and everything from the scoring table to the dress code. This guide reads it for its technical side.

It explains the supplied phone and what players may bring of their own, the earphones and voice chat, the network and why online play is ruled out, the game build and the match settings, the in-game skins, the routine before each match, the ban on pauses, the grounds for a replay, the handling of disconnections, and how appeals and penalties close the loop.

PUBG Mobile World Cup at the Esports World Cup 2026, Player Handbook, version 1.0, July 29, 2026, sections 6.2, 7 and 11.1.

A handbook inside a wider rulebook

PUBG Mobile is the phone version of PUBG, a battle royale in which teams parachute onto a map, collect weapons and fight while a shrinking zone pushes the survivors together. In its competitive form, sixteen squads share a lobby, the virtual room a match is played in, and points come from where a team finishes and how many opponents it eliminates.

The handbook is the title rulebook of this one tournament. It sits under the jurisdiction of the Esports World Cup Global Rulebook, the set of rules that applies to every game of the event, and it says so in its opening section. The handbook also says that the Tournament Administration, the officials who run the competition, always has the last word. Their decisions are final and not subject to appeal, except where the handbook clearly provides for one.

The administration may also update the rules. Taking part in the tournament counts as accepting those changes, so version 1.0 is the text as it stood when teams were preparing to travel, not a promise that every line stays fixed.

The format gives the technical rules their weight. The handbook sets a Group Stage of 32 teams in two groups of 16, then a Survival Stage of 16 teams, then Grand Finals of 16 teams over three days, with six matches a day in each phase. Each roster has four starters and one or two substitutes. Across that many matches, a fault that is not handled the same way every time would weigh on the standings.

One supplied phone for every player

Section 7 is short and firm. Players receive the Honor Magic7 Pro phone and the other equipment they need, and the handbook states the rule in one line: "Players must use the provided equipment and LAN cable during the tournament."

The practical effect is that every player at the event competes on the same model of device. Nobody arrives with a phone tuned at home, and nobody gains from a newer screen or a different processor. The handbook names the phone and nothing more about it; it is the tournament's equipment, chosen by the organizer.

A player's own equipment is prohibited unless the Administration Team approves it in writing. The handbook foresees one ordinary case where that happens: when supplied equipment fails and can be repaired within a reasonable time, the administration gives written approval for the player to use their personal equipment in the meantime. The approval is written, case by case, and tied to the repair.

Two further rules protect the devices themselves. Replacing devices or modifying the network settings on them is prohibited and can be penalized. And a player who damages the equipment pays for it at the market price.

On a phone, fairness is built before the plane takes off: the same device, the same cable and the same build for everyone.

Earphones and voice chat

Sound is information in a battle royale. Footsteps, a door, the direction of a shot: players listen as much as they look. The handbook sets two rules for it.

Earphones must be cable ones, with a 3.5 mm jack, and each player must bring their own in-ear set. Wireless earbuds are therefore out, and so is any set that a player would share with a teammate.

Team voice chat, the channel the four players use to talk to each other during a match, runs on the equipment provided by the organizer. A player who cannot hear a teammate is told to report it to the on-site referee rather than fix it alone.

The earphones also come back in the match-day procedure. Once a match is under way, no player may stand up or take off their headphones or earphones until the whole match ends, and the handbook adds that this holds even for a player whose character has already been eliminated. A player who is out of the game stays in the same position as one who is still playing, so that nothing said or heard around the stage reaches the team.

Coaches sit outside that bubble. Section 11.3 allows each team a maximum of one coach in the tournament area between matches, and the coach must leave once players are asked to join the match lobby.

The network: cable first, WiFi second

Section 8 sets two modes of connection, both provided by the tournament organizers. The primary mode is wired, through a LAN cable plugged into the phone. The secondary mode is wireless, over WiFi. The order matters: the cable is the normal setup, and the radio link is the fallback.

LAN stands for local area network: the phone is plugged by cable into the organizer's own network in the venue. It is also why the equipment rule names the LAN cable alongside the phone, and why modifying the network settings of a supplied device is on the list of prohibited acts.

The same section closes a door that online tournaments leave open. Players who are not traveling to Paris cannot join matches online. A player who misses the trip cannot play from home. The participant rules count on that: the Esports World Cup covers travel and accommodation for up to six members of each team, with four main players and one substitute mandatory.

The test matches are mandatory. The handbook lists attendance at them, and at rehearsals, among the duties of every team, and it says that players can report any internet issue during those sessions. Once play begins, a connection problem meets the stricter rules on pauses and replays described below.

The game build and the match settings

Every match is played on the same version of the game. Section 4.1 fixes it at version 4.4.0, so a mid-tournament update cannot change weapon behavior or maps between two days of play.

Section 4.2 then sets the custom room, the private lobby the organizer configures for each match. The table below lists the parameters as the handbook gives them.

Several of these settings remove help the game can give a player. Third person means the camera sits behind the character, which lets a player see around corners; the handbook allows a switch to the first-person view, from the character's eyes. Aim assist, which nudges the crosshair toward a target, is off, so aiming rests on the player's own touch. Sound visualization, which shows sounds as markers on the screen, is off too.

Vague information is the one help that is switched on, and it hides rather than shows. The handbook explains it: a knocked player cannot see which player or team knocked them. A squad that loses a player in a fight therefore does not learn from the screen who did it.

The red zone, a random area of bombardment, and the flare guns, which call in extra supplies, are turned off, which takes two random events out of the match. Weapons, scopes and magazines are all set at x2 in the room settings.

The handbook also sets the maps. Each day's six matches follow one rotation: the first match on Rondo, the next three on Erangel and the last two on Miramar. Rondo carries a Recall feature and a random choice between two flight routes, and some features of the public game, such as shops or the self-revive kit, are not available on every map. The blue zone, the safe area that shrinks over time, follows stage tables set in the handbook, one for Erangel and Rondo and one for Miramar, and the handbook says match parameters may change, with players notified in advance.

The same skins on every screen

Section 5 extends the idea of identical equipment to what appears inside the game. Players must use the skin set provided by the administration: outfit, parachute, backpack, helmet, plane finish, the required and optional weapon skins, and the pan, the frying pan the game uses as a close-range item.

Every character in the lobby therefore wears the set the organizer chose. Removing any part of the set during a game is prohibited, and so is dismantling or selling the items. A breach counts toward the unified offence total described at the end of this guide.

The handbook said the full skin list would be released on August 3, the day of arrival in Paris. Flags follow the same logic: section 12 requires every in-game flag to be set to the Erangel flag, and no flag or country marker may appear on players' apparel or items.

Before the plane: the match-day routine

Section 11 turns all of these rules into a routine. Each step has a time attached, and the steps below follow the order the handbook gives.

The 20-minute window starts when players enter the tournament area, and the handbook asks for the setup to be completed inside it. That is the time to arrange controls on the screen, set sensitivity and check sound, because once the pre-match test is confirmed the devices are not touched again until the match begins.

Two further points sit around this routine. Section 4 asks teams to follow the on-site referees during the pre-match checks, and a team that refuses to make an adjustment it is asked for can face a prize reduction or another penalty. And section 13.4 deals with lateness: if players do not appear within five minutes after the match start, the game may go ahead without them.

No pauses, and when a match is replayed

Section 6.1 is one of the shortest in the handbook and one of the strictest: no pause is allowed once the pre-match checks are completed. Disconnections caused by personal circumstances are the team's own responsibility.

A match that goes wrong is not paused; it is either played on or remade. A remake, which players request as a rehost, means the match is restarted from the beginning in a fresh lobby. Section 6.2 lists the grounds on which a game can be remade.

The three-minute limit is the key figure. A fault in the first three minutes after the official starts the match, when squads are still in the plane or landing, can justify starting over. After that window, the technical ground no longer applies and the match is played on. The technical ground also carries an exception: it does not apply when the fault is the player's own.

The last row shows that a match can be remade for reasons that have nothing to do with the teams. Observers are the operators who follow the action in the lobby for the broadcast, and when half or more of their clients crash, disconnect or lag, the match itself can be restarted.

The handbook sets a procedure for asking. A player raises a hand, gives the reason and the evidence, and keeps playing until the administration confirms the rehost. Stopping on one's own initiative is not part of the process. For cases the list does not cover, section 6.3 leaves the decision to the Administration Team case by case, and it warns that a player who submits a false report can be disqualified. A player who is able to rejoin a game in progress is allowed to do so.

Disconnections and compensation points

Section 6.4 deals with a player who drops out of the match. It measures its window from the plane rather than from the official's start. The window it gives is when all players land on Spawn Island, the starting area before the flight, and within three minutes after the plane takes off. A player who disconnects in that window must notify the on-site referee and try to reconnect to the game twice.

If the player still cannot play normally after those two attempts, the Administration Team remakes the game. The two attempts come first: a player who can rejoin keeps their match, and the lobby is not restarted for a fault that a reconnection would have solved.

Section 6.5 covers a fault specific to the landing. Sometimes a character is pulled back up by the parachute before touching the ground, a glitch that forces a second landing. If that character is then killed by an enemy team during the second landing or within 60 seconds of it, the team receives two compensation points.

The rule comes with conditions. The player must report the incident to the on-site referee immediately, and the pullback must be confirmed by checking the game file. Without a screen recording, no points are awarded unless the incident can be confirmed in another way. Section 11 gives players the means: they may record their screen for the first three minutes of a match, the window in which parachute faults occur.

Two points are not small in this format. The handbook's scoring table gives 10 points for first place in a match, 6 for second, 5 for third and 1 for each elimination, so two compensation points are the whole gap between a second-place finish and a fourth-place one.

Appeals, offences and penalty points

Every decision on the technical rules can meet the appeal procedure of section 11.4. An appeal is submitted through Discord, the chat platform the tournament uses, within 15 minutes of the end of the match it concerns. The administration usually shares the result of its investigation before the next match, or within 30 minutes of the appeal window closing. At the end of each day, the team captain confirms the results with the referee.

The cost of breaking a rule is set out in section 13. Offences are counted under a unified system that adds up breaches of both the Global Rulebook and the title handbook. The first offence brings a warning, the second five penalty points, and each further offence five more points; a severe case may skip the warning. Several of the rules in this guide, such as the skin set and the rule on lateness, say expressly that a breach counts toward that total.

Penalty points are paid in money. Section 13.6 says that each point deducts 1% of the participant's prize money for the competition, so a second offence costs 5% and a third 10%. Prize money is paid no earlier than five weeks after the event, and taxes and fees may be deducted.

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