How to watch Esports World Cup 2026: full guide

The Esports World Cup 2026 opens in Paris, France, on Monday, July 6, 2026, and runs through Sunday, August 23, the first edition staged outside Riyadh after the relocation announced in mid-May. The main event is now 33 days away, and the Road to EWC is in its final qualifier phase. The Valorant cycle is fully closed across EMEA, Americas, Pacific, and China. The remaining live qualifier tracks are League of Legends in three regions and Dota 2 regional closed qualifiers across CIS, Southeast Asia, Western Europe, and the Americas. This guide is refreshed every morning while the EWC and the EWC Qualifier track are active. Today is Wednesday, June 3, 2026, and the headline of the day is Dota 2: the Eastern Europe closed qualifier crowns its winner tonight, and the Southeast Asia closed qualifier kicks off.

Live this week: today's must-watch matches

Wednesday is a hand-off day on the Road to Paris. The Dota 2 Eastern Europe closed qualifier, which has run from June 1 to June 3 with eight CIS-region teams, plays its final-day bracket today, with the winner sealing the CIS direct slot into the EWC main event in Paris. Streams run on the official Dota 2 broadcasting channels on Twitch and YouTube in English and Russian. Liquipedia and Dotabuff carry the schedule and final standings.

Today is also Day 1 of the Dota 2 Southeast Asia closed qualifier, which runs June 3 to June 5 with another eight-team bracket. Three more regional Dota 2 brackets, Western Europe, North America, and South America, run later this month into early July. The EWC Dota 2 main event opens July 7, the day after the Paris ceremony.

On the League of Legends side, three qualifier brackets are still active. The LCK Online Qualifier runs through Saturday, June 6, with T1 already locked in for the first LCK direct slot and the second LCK slot resolving in the lower bracket. The LEC Online Qualifier closes on Sunday, June 7, with G2 Esports and Karmine Corp already through and a third EMEA slot path still open via the Road to MSI track. The LCS Online Qualifier runs through Sunday, June 14. The LPL Online Qualifier follows the same cadence with two China direct slots on the line. Bracket reference on /leagues/league-of-legends/ewc.

In CBLOL, Split 2 crowns its champion on June 6, which will mark the first team from South America confirmed at EWC 2026, with the CBLOL EWC qualifier itself resolving by June 14.

Full schedule by game

The EWC 2026 main event runs from July 6 to August 23 at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, with 25 tournaments spread across 24 games over seven weeks. Several game championships run in parallel across the Paris Expo halls.

The confirmed game lineup is: Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Call of Duty: Warzone, Chess, Counter-Strike 2, Crossfire, Dota 2, EA Sports FC 26, FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves, Fortnite, Free Fire, Honor of Kings, League of Legends, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Overwatch 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, PUBG Mobile, Rocket League, Street Fighter 6, Teamfight Tactics, TEKKEN 8, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege X, Trackmania, and Valorant. The Call of Duty program covers both Black Ops 7 and Warzone with separate brackets. Trackmania is new to the lineup this year, and Fortnite returns with the Reload game mode.

Per-game bracket pages on Esport Agenda map to each title's EWC view: League of Legends, Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, Dota 2, Rocket League, and Rainbow Six Siege. Overwatch 2 and Call of Duty do not yet have a per-game EWC bracket page; follow them through the Overwatch hub and the Call of Duty hub until those bracket pages open.

Game-by-game start dates inside the seven-week window: Dota 2 opens the program from July 7 to July 19, League of Legends runs July 15 to 19, Rainbow Six Siege takes the August 4 to 15 window, Rocket League sits on August 12 to 16, and Counter-Strike 2 closes the calendar with its grand final on August 23 after a tournament window of August 12 to 23.

Format and prize pool

The Esports World Cup 2026 carries a record $75 million total prize pool, up from $71.5 million in 2025. The headline allocations confirmed by the organizers are clear.

The EWC Club Championship distributes $30 million across the top 24 clubs, with the winning club receiving $7 million. The Club Championship is the umbrella standing that rewards multi-game club performance across the seven weeks. To take the trophy a club must also win at least one Game Championship outright, which has reshaped how the multi-game clubs approach roster building. Individual Game Championships combine for more than $39 million in dedicated prize pools, awarded per tournament. The remainder is allocated to Club and Player Awards, including per-tournament MVP awards and the Jafonso Award, given to a player or club that wins a Game Championship after advancing from a Last Chance Qualifier.

More than 2,000 players from over 200 clubs and 100 countries will compete. Each game retains its own competitive format, with most tournaments running double-elimination playoff brackets after group or seeding stages.

Club Championship standings: today's snapshot

The Club Championship standings will not begin to populate until the main event opens on July 6, since the format aggregates points earned across game championships during the seven-week window. Today, June 3, all clubs sit at zero. The qualifier results currently determine which clubs will be on the start line, not what their Club Championship score will be. Refresh checks will start once the first Game Championship opens in early July.

What is settled right now is the roster of clubs already locked into the main event through 2025 results and qualifier wins.

For League of Legends: defending EWC 2025 LoL champion Gen.G is pre-qualified, G2 Esports sealed the first LoL EMEA slot on May 16 (3-0 over Karmine Corp in the EMEA Upper Bracket Final), Karmine Corp then secured the second EMEA slot on May 17 (3-1 over Movistar KOI in the EMEA Lower Bracket Final), and T1 locked in the first LCK slot on May 25 (3-1 over Dplus KIA). The second LCK slot resolves at the LCK qualifier finale on June 6, and LCS, LPL, and CBLOL slots resolve over the next 11 days.

For Valorant: Team Heretics is pre-qualified as the EWC 2025 Valorant winner. EMEA closed with Gentle Mates, Karmine Corp, and BBL Esports. Americas closed with MIBR, 100 Thieves, and the third name confirmed in the Sunday, May 31 lower-bracket final. Pacific closed on Monday, June 1 with three names. The China path closed on May 20. We continue to cross-check the full 12-team Valorant field against the official EWC Valorant page, VLR.gg, and Liquipedia before printing the final list here.

In Counter-Strike 2, 28 of the 32 main-event slots are locked in through the Global VRS rankings, regional qualifiers, and the Asian Champions League path. The final four CS2 spots resolve through the Open Qualifier hosted on LAN inside the Paris venue just before the main event begins, on a non-BYOC LAN format that can hold up to 128 entrants.

In Rocket League, Karmine Corp are confirmed as EWC Title Defender; the EU and NA regional standings closed on Sunday, May 24, locking in three clubs from each region based on RLCS 2026 results, with cross-checks against the official EWC Rocket League page and Liquipedia.

Where to watch: regional co-streams

The EWC operates global broadcasts in English plus regional co-streams in major languages. Today's Dota 2 closed-qualifier matches stream on the official Dota 2 broadcasting channels on Twitch and YouTube, with Russian-language coverage on the CIS side and English coverage on the Southeast Asia opener. The remaining League of Legends LCK, LEC, LCS, LPL, and CBLOL qualifiers carry on each region's official broadcast channels.

For the main event from July 6 onward, expect the regular EWC broadcast slate: a global English feed on the official Esports World Cup channels, plus language-specific feeds for the major rights regions including French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Arabic, with the French feed gaining first-party prominence given the Paris host city. With Paris hosting, French co-stream production is expected to expand for the LoL, Valorant, Rocket League, and Rainbow Six Siege brackets.

Storylines to track

The headline storyline of the qualifier window remains Gen.G's title defense. The Korean side enters Paris as the defending LoL champion, with T1 joining as the LCK direct seed and the second LCK seed completing the Korean trio after Saturday, June 6.

In the West, G2 Esports and Karmine Corp sealed both LoL EMEA slots inside a 48-hour window in mid-May. KC's bounce back is the storyline of the EMEA cycle: after losing the EMEA Upper Bracket Final 0-3 to G2, they ran the EMEA Lower Bracket to take the second slot, then carried that momentum into the EWC EMEA Valorant Qualifier, where they locked in one of the three EMEA Valorant slots alongside Gentle Mates and BBL Esports. Karmine Corp now arrive at Paris with deep brackets in LoL, Valorant, and Rocket League, which puts them on a credible Club Championship trajectory before the first map is played.

The other live thread is the venue itself. The relocation from Riyadh to Paris was confirmed in mid-May and reshaped ticketing, travel, and the broadcast schedule for European audiences. Specific game-by-game venue assignments inside the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles are still being announced. The Paris move puts the seven-week run inside Europe's largest single exhibition complex, which means same-day cross-game spectating becomes realistic for ticket holders for the first time in EWC history.

In Rocket League, Karmine Corp's title defense is the singular storyline. KC took the EWC 2025 Rocket League trophy and re-enter as the only team with a free pass into the main event, with the three EU regional slots and three NA regional slots filled by RLCS 2026 league finishers as of the Sunday, May 24 cutoff. RLCS standings, not a separate qualifier bracket, decide those six clubs. In Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Rainbow Six Siege, the EWC seeding draws from each title's own circuit standings and direct invites; we will detail the per-game lineups as each title's qualification window closes. CS2 expands to 32 teams this year with a two-stage double-elimination format and an Open Qualifier, and the CS2 grand final closes the entire event on August 23.

Pick'em

Make your picks on the EWC 2026 Pick'em. Per-game brackets are linked from each game's hub once they open.

Reminders and notifications

Set match reminders from the homepage or any per-tournament page on Esport Agenda to get a notification 30 minutes before tip-off. Notifications cover broadcasts in your selected language. We recommend enabling reminders for today's Dota 2 EEU closing day and SEA opening day, the LCK final on Saturday, June 6, the LEC closer on Sunday, June 7, and the July 6 opening day at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.

Closing CTA

Bookmark this guide. We refresh it every morning while the EWC and the EWC Qualifier track are live. For today's matches and the running daily digest, see the EWC daily highlights and the EWC Qualifier guide. The Paris main event opens on July 6, 2026, and we will be on it live, every day, until the closing ceremony on August 23.