The Esports World Cup Moved From Riyadh to Paris and Team Falcons Lost the Club Championship for the First Time
AG.AL took the seven million dollar club prize on 5,300 points, clinching it in Trackmania of all titles. The seventy-five million dollar event drew 850 million viewers.
AG.AL won the Esports World Cup Club Championship and its $7 million prize, ending two years of Team Falcons at the top. They are only the second organisation ever to win it. The 2026 edition was held in Paris rather than Riyadh.
The final club standings
| Rank | Club | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | AG.AL | 5,300 |
| 2 | Team Falcons | 4,600 |
| 3 | Team Vitality | 3,300 |
| 4 | Natus Vincere | 2,950 |
| 5 | Team Liquid | 2,700 |
AG.AL clinched it in Trackmania. French player Gwendal "Gwen" Duparc won the inaugural EWC Trackmania championship and its $130,000 first prize, worth 1,000 club points. AG.AL's chief operating officer Eddy Chen said of the result, "This title shows how far that vision has come."
The relocation
The Esports World Cup Foundation announced the move to Paris on 21 May 2026, after chief executive Ralf Reichert met French president Emmanuel Macron. Security concerns tied to the Iran-United States conflict were the reported reason, cited alongside the cancellation of the Jeddah Formula One Grand Prix.
The scale of it
The prize pool was $75 million, a record for the event, across twenty-five tournaments in twenty-four games, with more than 2,000 competitors from over 100 countries representing 200 clubs.
| Metric | 2026 |
|---|---|
| Total viewers | 850 million |
| Hours watched | 440 million (+26%) |
| Peak concurrents | 4.3 million (LoL) |
| Tickets sold | 175,000 (+94%) |
| Venue visits | 2 million |
Other confirmed winners included Team Spirit in Counter-Strike 2, beating FUT Esports 3-1 with Danil "donk" Kryshkovets as most valuable player on a 1.50 rating; Kuaishou Gaming in the Honor of Kings World Cup; and S2G Esports of Turkey in the PUBG Mobile World Cup on 154 points from a $3.025 million pool. The CS2 grand final was moved to the Accor Arena to meet demand.
Following it on Playdash
Playdash prices the Esports World Cup across its major titles - series winner, map handicap, correct score and totals on individual matches, plus club championship outrights that stay live across the whole seven-week run. Paris hours put most finals in the late Southeast Asian evening.
Standings, prize figures, viewership data and relocation details as published by the Esports World Cup Foundation press release, Deadline and esports-news.co.uk. Sources gave inconsistent start dates for the 2026 edition and no single start date is stated here. Correct at the time of writing on 28 August 2026.