The Esports World Cup Foundation announced that Chess.com, racing game RENNSPORT, battle royale game Crossfire, and battle royale game PUBG: Battlegrounds will be featured at the next Esports World Cup competition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in summer 2025.
Financial terms of these games being included were not disclosed.
These titles joins previously announced titles that will be part of the eight-week competition (taking place in early July and running into late August) including Epic Games’ vehicle-based action game Rocket League, Activision Blizzard’s hero shooter Overwatch 2, football game EA FC 25, MOONTON’s Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Level Infinite and Krafton’s mobile battle royale game PUBG Mobile, EA’s PC-based battle royale game Apex Legends, Ubisoft’s tactical team-based shooter Rainbow Six Siege, Valve’s MOBA Dota 2, Capcom’s Street Fighter 6, SEA LTD’s popular PC and mobile battle royal game Free Fire, Tencent’s MOBA Honor of Kings, Valve’s tactical team-based shooter Counter-Strike 2, and Activision Blizzard’s first-person shooters Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty Warzone.
During the 2024 EWC, RENNSPORT offered a total prize pool of $500K USD, with Team Redline beating out Team Vitality, MOUZ, and Williams Esports to take home the lion’s share of the prize money.
Also returning is PUBG: Battlegrounds, which saw SONIQS beat out Petrichor Road, FaZe Clan, and TSM in 2024 to take home $700K of the total $2M prize pool.
Chess.com is a new entry for the Esports World Cup in 2025, offering a $1.5M total prize pool during the competition, along with participation from Chess Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, who will serve as a global ambassador. As part of the partnership, the Champions Chess Tour (CCT) will become the primary path for participating Chess players to qualify for the EWC championship event.
The Esports World Cup Foundation also announced a three-year partnership with South Korean publisher Smilegate to bring its popular battle royale game Crossfire to the competitions starting in 2025. The Esports World Cup Foundation did not reveal the prize pool for this very first competition.
To date the organization has announced 18 titles that will be included in the 2025 edition of its event, though conspicuously absent from the list are Riot Games’ slate of games including League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Valorant, and the 2v2 team-based fighting game 2XKO. We suspect that many of these games will be part of the 2025 competition, though these will likely be exhibition competitions that are not part of any official leagues.
The Esports World Cup is a multi-title, eight-week competition held on an annual basis during the summer managed by the Esports World Cup Foundation, a non-profit funded (it claims) by a sporting grant from the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. The Esports World Cup is operated by ESL FACEIT Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi government owned gaming and esports company Savvy Games Group—EFG is home to a number of tournament organizers and broadcast production companies including DreamHack, ESL, FACEIT, and Esports Engine.
Projects backed or owned by the Saudi Arabian government such as Esports World Cup are frequently criticized for helping the government engage in what is called “sports washing,” or using various forms of sport and entertainment to cover up its record on human rights, women’s rights, LGTBQ+ rights, military actions in Yemen, and more. These and other criticisms are actively highlighted by international watchdog groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.