Esports World Cup update

Chess is back in the Esports World Cup for 2026, with a five-day offline event scheduled for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in August. (liquipedia.net) Liquipedia lists the chess tournament for Aug. 11-15, 2026, with 21 players and a $1.5 million prize pool under the Esports World Cup banner. The event page names ESL FACEIT Group and Chess.com among the organizers. (liquipedia.net) The broader Esports World Cup runs from July 6 through Aug. 23 in Riyadh, and the Esports World Cup Foundation said in January that the 2026 edition would carry a total $75 million prize pool across the festival. The foundation also said the event would bring together more than 2,000 players and 200 clubs from over 100 countries. (esportsworldcup.com) League of Legends is already in its qualifying phase in North America. Liquipedia lists that regional qualifier as an online event running from April 14 through April 29 with eight teams. (liquipedia.net) That split format shows how the Esports World Cup operates: some titles are staged as finals in Riyadh, while others spend weeks feeding teams in through online regional brackets. The official competition pages list separate 2026 tracks for games including Chess and League of Legends. (esportsworldcup.com 1) (esportsworldcup.com 2) The umbrella is also widening beyond club teams. Liquipedia describes the 2026 Esports Nations Cup as the first edition of a multi-game, country-based series hosted by the Esports World Cup Foundation, with players representing countries directly instead of clubs. (liquipedia.net) In Apex Legends, the Nations Cup format starts with 40 national teams. The official event page says 20 nations get direct invitations based on cumulative Apex Legends Global Series championship points, 18 more come through regional online qualifiers, and two slots are reserved as wild cards. (esportsnationscup.com) The Esports World Cup itself was announced in late 2023 as a successor to Gamers8, according to Liquipedia’s League of Legends qualifier page. The 2026 calendar now puts club competition and country competition under related branding in the same Saudi-backed ecosystem. (liquipedia.net) For now, the clearest marker is the schedule: online qualifiers are already underway in April, and chess has a fixed August slot in Riyadh. By late summer, the Esports World Cup name is set to cover both a board game played over a physical table and national-team esports qualifiers played online. (liquipedia.net 1) (liquipedia.net 2)