The Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF) has announced that Chess.com, MOONTON Games, and SNK will join the inaugural Esports Nations Cup (ENC) as Official Publishers. The
ENC is a new global tournament, announced in August, in which top esports athletes compete while representing their home countries. Designed as a recurring, large-scale international competition, the ENC aims to introduce national identity and regional representation to the world esports stage.
The three newly added publishers join EA, Krafton, Tencent, and Ubisoft, which are serving as Founding Publishers for the event. These core partners are working with the EWCF to develop the foundational structure, competitive framework, and overall format of the ENC.
As Official Publishers, Chess.com, MOONTON Games, SNK, and all future partners will collaborate on qualification systems and competitive formats for their respective game titles to ensure competitive integrity and a unified global structure.
Ralf Reichert, CEO of the Esports World Cup Foundation shared the following:
“By partnering closely with publishers, we can make the Esports Nations Cup truly player-centric, and give players the opportunity to represent their country in the games that define their careers,”
“With the seven partners announced so far as close collaborators, we can activate players worldwide and deliver a Nations Cup that feels earned for players and real for fans, and build a stage that national teams can aspire to for years to come.”
The ENC will feature national teams from North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Competitions will span both team-based and individual-player formats. Qualification will reportedly follow a multi-layered model that incorporates global rankings, regional qualifying events, wildcard positions, and solidarity placements designed to support broad international representation.
The announcement of the new publishers comes weeks after the International Olympic Committee officially ended cooperation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) on the Olympic Esports Games, an event which would have borne many similarities to the ENC.
The Esports Nations Cup becomes the latest addition to the EWCF’s event portfolio. It builds on the Esports World Cup, a multi-million dollar event with dozens of titles represented. That event, scheduled to continue through 2026 and beyond, has faced allegations of sports washing, due to the KSA’s documented history of human rights abuses.
The inaugural Esports Nations Cup is scheduled to take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in November 2026. After its debut, the event will adopt a rotating host-nation model to bring the competition to different regions around the world. The ENC will be held biennially.
Featured Image Credit: EWCF
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