We are well into the year now but its been an eventful one so far for esports, with some really good wins for the industry overall, along with a few not so good losses scattered in for good measure.
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Themes of 2026
What seems to be a major talking point overall (and very misconstrued might I add) is that the esports industry is in decline, and yes, while there has been significant change, the ecosystem seems to be moving towards focusing on sustainability, rather than the overhyped, ridiculous throw money at it phase we had in previous years, that didn’t work, surprisingly (sarcasm mode engaged). This could be contributed to a shift in how people engage with esports more so than a downward trend overall.
What we all knew would happen is that mobile gaming and tournaments are growing, which is a major shift from traditional viewership and engagement, but does mean that games like PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends Bang-Bang are finding new life in younger audiences. So, with all that change in mind what has been happening in the wonderful world of competitive gaming this year so far? We will look at four of each W and L as an overview, but as always with esports this will just be scratching the surface.
Esports W’s
There’s a lot of good news happened in the last 9 months, and although no unfortunately its not an EU team winning a major tournament in League of Legends, the teams and players in major titles have been making some unexpected waves with just a couple of the highlights below.
In Rocket League, Samy “dralii” Hajji became the first player to win three Esports World Cup (EWC) titles with three different rosters (BDS in 2024, Karmine Corp 2025, and Falcons 2026) which is a major achievement for any player, and follows closely in the footsteps of players like Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk (League of Legends) who won the 2017 World Championship with Samsung Galaxy, the MSI 2023 with JD Gaming, and the MSI 2025 with Gen.G. Although the EWC had to move quickly to Paris from Saudi Arabia this year due to world events, the fact that players and teams are still having W’s like this can only be a positive thing.
Sticking with the EWC theme, FaZe Clan won the Rainbow Six Siege (R6) EWC title, with three players (Cyber, soulz1, KDS) becoming the first to complete the ‘Triple Crown’ (Six Invitational, a Major, and EWC) which is an insane amount of titles won, but its worth noting this was over a two year period. R6 has always had a huge turnout and although struggles with toxicity, (the AI moderation in chat has somewhat reduced that, and its a label that plagues a lot of esports titles ) it remains a solid choice of game, just behind the giants of Valorant, League of Legends and Counter-Strike.
In other news, the IEM Championship in June of this year topped the charts as the largest viewership of any Counter-Strike final of all time, with a whopping 100 million hours plus watched and a peak of 2.75 million viewers. It still has a way to go to beat the likes of the Valorant and League of Legends major final viewership but still a W for all Counter-Strike fans out there.
In less entertaining but still important news, one of the biggest ones from the UK is the inclusion of esports related Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes, which give formal classification to esports as an industry from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). This sounds less exciting than it is but overall means we can now track economic data and improve investment opportunities, which a lot of esports organisations from grassroots all the way up to Tier 1 have been crying out for.
The not so good stuff (L’s)
So its safe to say, as with any industry there will always be areas that have a fair share of L’s and esports is by no means an exception. With an ecosystem that has both entertainment and competition at its core, there are bound to be lots of drama, scandals and shocks to the system (no where near K-Drama levels but close at times). Here is just a sample of some of them.
A gentler one to start with, apart from the Esports World Cup (which has its fair share of sports washing, boycotts and other concerns) one of the other big announcements of 2026 from a global perspective was the announcement of the Esports Nation Cup. This is in essence very similar to the EWC with the exception that teams & individuals compete and represent countries, instead of competitive teams and individuals, with 204 countries engaging. The event was originally set to be this year but has been delayed to 2027, citing issues with games publishing rights and defining what the roles of the national teams look like. Both the EWC and the ENC are both run from the same non profit organisation, which should mean that the relationships and collaborations with games publishers should have already been put in place, right?. As always with esports there is more to this than just that, and honestly, running the biggest global esports tournament in the world will have more than its fair share of stumbling blocks, so we will see how it plays out.
This year has also had (as most years do) issues and scandals, especially in large scale tournaments like the EWC. DOTA 2 had a devastating time with players Oswaldo “DarkMago” Herrera and coach Juan “Vintage” Angulo of team PTime, suspended by ESIC (Esports Integrity Commission) for suspected match-fixing, leading to the team’s disqualification. This, in conjunction with another player LGD Gaming prodigy Santiago “TaiLung” Aguero, who was banned from The International 2026 over similar allegations, which he denies, didnt really shed a good light on the games teams and players.
In chess (yes chess was in the EWC), in a third place match, Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura got frustrated after a series of pauses and glitches, forfeited and walked out of the arena. The organisers waited 20 minutes for him to return before declaring Alireza Firouzja the winner by default. It seems like even in chess you can get tilted and FF a game.
Again switching back to less entertaining but still important news, one setback for the industry this year was the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision not to include esports as part of the Olympic offering. This has been on and off the cards for a couple of years, but honestly, the lack of knowledge about what esports is, plus trying to integrate sports games which are generically not as popular as the games teams and individuals already compete in, never really felt like it had enough legs. There may be hope for more AR and VR games like HADO or e-tennis to make more of an impact, but with the likes of the EWD and ENC, it doesn’t look like it will be a part of the Olympics anytime soon.
Esports is not dull
So all in all, even with just the 8 examples given the industry we all work in continues to keep us all on our toes, from dramas to match fixing, global events to smaller tournaments, the competitive world of gaming is one that is always changing and never sits still. A lot of the W’s that are mentioned are genuinely good for an industry where at least half of the world still says “esports? what’s that” when you mention it.
The fact that esports as a whole is set to bring into a global economy of between $17 to $28 billion by 2031 (depending on who you talk to) with viewership, gambling (that’s a whole other article) tourism and sponsorships alone, means that this is an industry that is going no where, and will get bigger and better each year. Esports is as a famous saying goes “Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?”
“The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!”
learned stuff I didnt know before, bang on