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[cormack12]

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20260617211051/https://www.polygon.com/evo-2026-fewer-competitors/

Evo is historically the largest fighting game tournament in the world and it takes place each year in Las Vegas. Capcom, Bandai Namco, and other fighting game developers also use the show to make announcements or debut new characters for their games. As such, a dip in popularity like this is a bit concerning.

When the registration numbers were shared on June 12, Street Fighter 6 had the most participants with 2,414. That's significantly less than the 4,228 people who competed in the same game at Evo 2025. Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves all saw similar declines. Rivals of Aether 2 was unaffected, having more entrants than last year.

This caused speculation over why the numbers dropped, and there are several potential reasons why this happened. Evo 2026 is taking place earlier than usual this year, in June rather than August. There are also more Evo-branded tournaments happening around the world than before. Evo Japan happened in May, and Evo France is slated for October.

 

[Generic]

Fighting games were ruined by giga autism, nowadays they are all about memorizing hitboxes and frames.

 

[lockdown2222]

Cost of living has also gone up, might be tough for some of these people to get there, too.

 

[begotten]

The drop off makes sense because if you're attending a big FGC event like EVO, people typically just enter every game, especially SF at least.

So if other games aren't flourishing (which is what it feels like to me observing a community I used to be more involved with) then all the numbers go down.

Like NRS fumbling MK1 was bad.
Current Tekken doesn't seem that hot.
GGS and DBFZ alongside it before, are games that have been out for awhile now and were always a rung below in entrants and interest.
Then you have Smash which has been gone for awhile now which hurts.

Feels like SF6 is the only thing holding up numbers and attention for now.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

Isn't Las Vegas really expensive now?

 

[Richard Packer]

There are so many EVOs now. The brand is diluted. Plus with the state of America right now, nobody wants to travel to America. Evo Japan had very healthy numbers and a lot of my friends chose to go there instead of EVO Vegas.