Top Esports Athletes Will Compete for National Glory in the Esports Nations Cup
By — Front Office Sports
Posted — August 27, 2025
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A new era is here for esports. For the first time, the world’s best competitors will play not only for their clubs but for their flags as well.
In 2026, the Esports World Cup Foundation will introduce the Esports Nations Cup (ENC): a new, biennial esports competition. Similar to other major international sporting events like the FIFA World Cup and World Baseball Classic, the ENC will feature competitors representing individual nations. The news came on Aug. 23 at the New Global Sports Conference in Riyadh, and marks a turning point for esports on the world stage.
In the ENC, the world’s elite players will square off for their nations across the most popular and competitive esports titles. For the inaugural event, which will take place in Riyadh next November as part of a four-week-long esports festival, the Esports World Cup Foundation will work with Electronic Arts, Krafton, Tencent, and Ubisoft, plus more to come. Later ENCs will rotate to other host cities for a truly global format.
The ENC is the first of its kind—a different event from the annual Esports World Cup, which also takes place in Saudi Arabia. The Esports World Cup is a club-focused event, and the introduction of the ENC expands the format to a global competition, much like traditional world cup events across sports. The esports athletes will compete in both team-based and solo-player formats.
The introduction of the ENC comes at a pivotal time for the esports industry. Throughout the past few years, esports has gone through a period known as the “esports winter,” during which some companies, teams, and leagues struggled.
But the esports economy is still showing strength and is poised to skyrocket, and new spins on esports are keeping the market growing. Viewership for certain esports titles is changing, especially with the introduction of individual game streamers, but the global esports market is currently valued at $2.13 billion and projected to reach $7.46 billion by 2030. As the game-streaming market is projected to jump from $9.8 billion to $21.20 billion in the same period, many esports competitions are allowing co-streaming on YouTube and Twitch to promote growth.
The ENC will bring together nations across seven regions: North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Africa, Asia, and Southeast Asia and Oceania. Qualifying will feature a mix of invites, open online qualifiers, combined global rankings, and host country slots that will account for about 4%. For these new national teams, the prize pool—which includes guaranteed money for all players—will spike in the ENC, which will be built through partnerships with local federations to help strengthen local esports scenes.
The ENC is just one part of Saudi Arabia’s strong push into gaming. The country’s video game market is worth $1.8 billion—a value that’s poised to spike to $6.8 million by 2030. Nearly 23.5 million people of its 35 million population are active gamers, and its young population—nearly 70% are under 35—will propel this growth. Zooming out, esports and gaming’s contribution to Saudi Arabia’s GDP is projected to hit $13.3 billion by 2030 and generate about 39,000 jobs.
The ENC will be a marquee event not only for Saudi Arabia but also for the rest of the esports world. Players from different countries have traditionally been teammates across titles—but now, they’ll go head-to-head as they represent their countries.
The 2026 ENC will set the table for the inaugural—and major—Olympic Esports Games in Riyadh in 2027. Friends will become foes and open a whole new type of competition on the sport’s biggest stage.
Learn More about the Esports World Cup
Go to EWC
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The new biennial event, starting in 2026, kicks off a monumental next era for esports.
