The regional finalists of Evo 2021 Online will get to compete in-person
Evo 2021 won’t just be a solely online event after all. The organizers of the fighting game championship series announced today that an Evo 2021 Showcase will be held on Nov. 27 and 28 in Las Vegas, pitting the finalists of each game’s regional bouts against each other in person.
The Evo 2021 Showcase will bring in top players from each regional tournament, flying them to Las Vegas to compete in the UFC APEX Arena. The five main games will all be present: Guilty Gear Strive, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, Tekken 7, and recent addition to the lineup Skullgirls 2nd Encore.
Two champions from each participating Evo region—including North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia—will compete for a prize pool of $125,000, with $25,000 allotted per game. It will all stream on the Evo Twitch channel, and the tournament has confirmed it will be adhering to COVID safety precautions.
Though it isn’t quite the massive open bracket that Evo is usually known for, having some sort of championship bracket built up from flying in the finalists of each region should at least be fun to watch. This isn’t just a way to have some semblance of in-person fighting game events again, but it’s also a pretty major event in terms of promoting the games and their communities. And with several months of prep time between the end of Evo 2021 Online, which runs Aug. 6-8 and 13-15, and the start of the showcase on Nov. 27, there could be some good matches in store.
It’ll also be an early benchmark for Guilty Gear Strive, which launched just about a month ago. There have been some online weeklies and tournaments so far, but I’m personally pretty eager to see what everyone brings to Evo. Sign-ups for Evo 2021 Online, by the way, are only open until July 15 at 11:59 p.m. PT, so get on that if you haven’t yet. How else will you find out if your Sol is bad(guy) enough to win a trip to Vegas?
