Evolution Championship Series (EVO) coming to France in 2025
23 July 2024
Much of the international esports world’s attention at the moment is focused on the Esports World Cup that is currently taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And while that makes sense, it does not mean that the world of international esports is standing still elsewhere. On the contrary even, because a dynamic industry like the esports industry never stands still. Recently, this was once again confirmed when the Evolution Championship Series (EVO) announced the location of its next event. The 2025 edition of the world’s largest fighting game esports event will be taking place in Nice, France, from October 10th to October 12th.
(Watch the official introduction trailer here)
First big EVO event in Europe
The first edition of the EVO was organized in 1996, under the name “Battle at the Bay”, which focused on the titles Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter II Alpha. It took place in California, United States, where the event quickly gained considerable popularity. In 2002, the event was renamed the “Evolution Championship Series”, the name under which it still operates today.
Since the first EVO event in 2002, it was organized nineteen times and most of those times the location for the event was Las Vegas. This year’s Evolution Championship Series was, at the moment of writing, actually just played, with Victor “Punk” Woodley winning the whole thing. The American player represents esports organization FlyQuest and won $ 12.000 in prize money with his victory.
As mentioned earlier, the next EVO tournament will take place in fancy Nice, in the south of France, in October 2025. It will be the first time ever that the organizers are holding a large-scale EVO event in Europe. Besides the dates and the location, the organization has not announced many more details about the event. If we’re looking at this year’s event though, it seems safe to assume that Street Fighter 6 will be the title to feature, as this was also the case this year.
EVO’s outlook becoming more international
The decision to hold EVO 2025 in France underlines the organization’s ambition to grow its audiences in countries outside of Las Vegas, where almost all major EVO events were held until now. In the past years, EVO hosted more than a few events in other American states and countries, including California and Tokyo (Japan). And next year, it will be France’s turn to be the first European country to host a major EVO event. On top of the announcement of the location and dates for EVO 2025, the organization also mentioned that there will be a large-scale EVO event in Singapore in 2026.
“We wanted a pleasant and touristic destination,” the organizers of EVO say about Nice as location for EVO 2025, “One that is open to everyone, amateurs and professional players alike, for a competition that welcomes players from all over the world and that is very keen on its community aspect”.