Two of the year’s biggest esports events fall in the same stretch of summer, and their broadcast setups are different enough that it’s worth having one page to check rather than hunting across a dozen tournament sites. One note first: EVO 2026 already took place, from June 26 to 28. If you were expecting it in late July, that’s not accurate, so the section below covers where the VODs and archives live rather than a live schedule.
Esports World Cup 2026
The Esports World Cup runs July 6 to August 23 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. This is a change from the first two editions, which were held in Riyadh. The Esports Foundation moved the event to Paris in May, citing the regional situation from the Iran-US conflict, and said Riyadh remains the event’s long-term home with a planned return in 2027.
The event covers 24 games across 25 tournaments over seven weeks, with roughly 2,000 players from over 200 clubs and 100 countries. Total prize pool is $75 million.
How to watch: Every tournament streams live and free. The main channels are the official Esports World Cup Twitch and YouTube pages. Each game also has its own dedicated Twitch channel under the EWC banner, so search “Esports World Cup” on Twitch and pick the one for the game you want. Individual publishers stream their own game’s bracket too. Valorant, for instance, is also on the official Valorant Twitch and YouTube channels in addition to EWC’s own feed.
The event also runs one of the largest authorized co-streaming programs in its history, covering Twitch, YouTube, Bilibili, Huya, and TikTok, so you can watch through a creator’s channel in your own language rather than the main English broadcast if that’s what you prefer.
Individual game windows to know: Valorant’s EWC bracket runs July 2 to 12. Free Fire runs July 15 to 18 with a $1 million prize pool. Chess runs August 11 to 15. Apex Legends’ EWC leg (part of the ALGS Split 1 Playoffs) carries a $2 million prize pool. Check the official EWC schedule page for exact dates on the game you follow, since the seven-week window has different titles active in different weeks.
Opening ceremony: July 8 at La Seine Musicale, with performances from DJ Snake, Aya Nakamura, and Theodora. This is a separate ticketed event from the tournament matches themselves.
EVO 2026
EVO 2026 ran June 26 to 28 at the Las Vegas Convention Center’s West Hall. It featured 12 fighting game titles, including Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Riot’s 2XKO, which made its first Arena Finals appearance. Registration numbers were down from previous years, something Kotaku’s coverage tied to visa difficulties for international competitors, rising travel costs, and lingering discomfort among parts of the fighting game community with the tournament’s Saudi ownership.
Where the streams live now: EVO broadcasts across 10 separate Twitch channels during the event itself, and full VODs remain archived on the official EVO Twitch and YouTube channels after the fact. If you want to catch up on a specific game’s Top 8, search the EVO YouTube channel for that title’s Arena Finals.
What’s next for EVO: The next events on EVO’s calendar are EVO France, October 9 to 11 in Nice, and EVO Singapore, planned for 2027. Evo Japan already happened earlier in the year. If you specifically want a live EVO event to watch this summer, France in October is the next one on the calendar, not a late-July date.
A practical note on time zones
EWC runs on Paris time (CEST, UTC+2). If you’re in the Gulf, that’s one to two hours ahead; South Asia is three to four hours ahead. Shift the published Paris start time by that gap for your local time. There’s no need to convert manually every day since most tournament schedule pages, including EWC’s own site, list match times with a time zone selector.
Nothing here requires a paid subscription. Every match across both events streams free, and the co-streaming programs mean you have a real choice in language and commentary style rather than being stuck with a single default feed.