Destination KSA - Your Guide to Saudi

Destination KSA - Your Guide to Saudi

Check-mate: Chess has been added to the Esports World Cup 2025

The gaming festival is set to return next year

Check-mate: Chess has been added to the Esports World Cup 2025

Knight to e5.

Riyadh’s social calendar was completely packed this year. From brand-new zones at Riyadh Season like Dunes of Arabia and BLVD Runway to delicious openings across the city like the Japanese restaurant Zuma at KAFD, the capital city has been booked and busy.

2025 is set to be no different with dates for the first-ever UFC Power Slap, the second edition of UFC Fight Night, and MDLBEAST Soundstorm having been announced already.

The Esports World Cup is no different.

The largest gaming festival in the world is ready to make an awesome return in 2025. What’s more, the event will be adding chess to its roaster.

Yes, that’s right, one of the oldest strategy games will be coming to Riyadh next year because the Esports World Cup Foundation has signed a multi-year partnership with chess.com. Additionally, Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen will join Chess at the Esports World Cup as a Global Ambassador.

Chess.com is the leading website for playing, learning, and enjoying chess with nearly 200 million members.

So brush up on your English opening, Blackburne Shilling Defense, Absolute Pin among other strategies. This is everything you need to know about Chess and the World Cup.

Esports World Cup 2025

The championship featured eight weeks of intense gaming in some of most popular games worldwide. Additionally, the Esports World Cup offers a wide variety of events in addition to a distinctive cross-game tournament style.

The new annual gaming festival was first introduced in June of 2024 and has since then drummed up awesome levels of excitement. In addition to heart-pounding button-smashing, there were also fantastic international and regional artists lighting up the Boulevard City stage.

The competition featured the largest prize pool in esports history and had 1,500 elite athletes and 200 clubs from 100 countries. They competed in 22 tournaments across 21 games for a $60 million prize pool. The eight-week competition and festival drew 500 million views online and saw 2.6 million people attend.

Esports World Cup 2025 location

While the official location has not been confirmed for the next edition, it is quite possible that the festival will take over Boulevard City once again.

Esports World Cup 2025 dates

The second edition will take over Riyadh from Thursday, July 31 to Sunday, August 3, 2025.

Esports World Cup 2025 tickets

Tickets for the championship will go live closer to the start date.

Esports World Cup 2025 games

15 games have been announced from a possible 24. These include,

  1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
  2. Honor of Kings
  3. Call of Duty: Warzone
  4. Free Fire
  5. Street Fighter
  6. DOTA 2
  7. Rainbow Six Siege
  8. Counter Strike 2
  9. PUBG Mobile World Cup
  10. APEX Legends
  11. FC 25
  12. Overwatch 2
  13. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
  14. Rocket League
  15. Chess

The remaining games will be revealed in the coming 44 days.

Esports World Cup 2025 chess

The Champions Chess Tour (CCT), a fast Chess.com tournament circuit, will become the primary path for the world’s best Chess players to qualify for the EWC championship event.

In 2025, there will be two online Tour events, in February and May, boasting a combined $300k prize pool, offering players opportunities to compete on the world’s biggest esports stage.

The top 12 players from the CCT will be invited to the EWC Chess tournament, which will take place between July 31 and August 3, 2025. A Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ), open to both amateur and professional players, will be held in Riyadh and will determine four remaining spots to round out the field of competitors.

Players will compete for a share of the $1.5 million prize pool, and valuable Esports World Cup Club Championship points. 

The format of the competition has been designed to bring competitive Chess to a new esports audience. Matches will be played in the rapid 10+0 Chess format, giving games a quick pace while still showcasing the strategic brilliance of the players. Should a match be tied after regulation, there will be a single Armageddon game as a tiebreaker.

Riyadh in 2024

This year the Saudi capital has wowed national and international audiences with bopping events like the opening night of Riyadh Season 2024 which saw the return of Artur Beterbiev after a major knee surgery and win against Dmitry Bivol. The city also lit up with the fantastic notes of Arab singers for the first-ever Arab Billboard Awards 2024 as part of the inaugural Riyadh Music Week. Of course we cannot forget about the Riyadh Metro becoming operational this year as well as the Kingdom being confirmed as the host nation for FIFA World Cup 2034.

Thu Jul 31- Sun, Aug 3. Esports World Cup, esportsworldcup.com.



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