Planned Global Esports Federation (GEF) events in Peru for 2025 are on hold and may not happen, according to people involved in the process.
A representative of the Peruvian Esports Federation or Asociación Deportiva Peruana de Esports (ADPES) told The Esports Advocate this week that government action is pending. (Editor’s note: the following is a translation from Spanish.)
“It is suspended due to factors external to the federation,” the representative said. “The government, with so many changes, has not yet implemented its corresponding part.” The representative did not specify which governmental office or decree is involved, and did not provide a new timeline. The Global Esports Games, GEF’s annual championship event, was set to take place in November in Lima, Peru.
Other individuals familiar with the planning echoed the sentiment that government decisions have halted the competitions, though they said the underlying reason was unclear at press time.
Leadership Context
GEF’s founding president, Chris Chan, resigned in July 2025; CEO Paul J. Foster was named president ad interim the same month and was formally elected President & CEO in September 2025 with a term through December 2027. Likely unrelated but noteworthy, Global Esports Tour Commissioner and GEF Executive Director of Programs & Content Eric Brinkley also left the company in July.
Requests for Comment
TEA contacted Peru’s Instituto Peruano del Deporte (IPD)—the national sports institute—for comment on esports event approvals and public support. No one responded as of publication. IPD guides national sport and esports policy and receives a 20% portion of online betting tax revenue earmarked for sport, but it is not the online betting regulator; in Peru, online gambling and betting are regulated by MINCETUR (the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism). It is unclear if either GEF or ADPES received any funding from the IDP.
TEA also contacted the GEF and did not receive a response by publication time.
Track Record and Recent Announcement
- The last completed Global Esports Tour event publicly documented by organizers was GET24 Rio de Janeiro in April 2024, staged with Brazil’s CBGE and featuring Counter-Strike 2.
- In January 2025, GEF announced that its Global Esports Tour would head to Mumbai through a partnership with Skillhub Online Games Federation; GEF did not publish a completed-event recap at the time of writing. TEA has requested an update on timing.
- In August 2025, GEF announced that Los Angeles would host the 2026 Global Esports World Finals in partnership with the LA Times Media Group.
Peru’s Place in GEF’s Long-Range Calendar
GEF announced in May 2024 that Lima would host the 2025 Global Esports Games, with Los Angeles in 2026, Qatar in 2027, and Azerbaijan in 2029 highlighted as future hosts in federation communications and subsequent media coverage. Today’s uncertainty in Peru concerns the 2025 leg.
Precedent for Disruption
In November 2024, GEF advised that its in-person Chengdu event would not take place as planned and shifted competition into early 2025—language that did not use “canceled” but had that effect for qualified teams. At the time, GEF also ran into some sort of issues with the local government.