Rocket League continues its Esports World Cup partnership with three-year deal from 2026-28

For the fourth summer in a row, Rocket League is heading to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as the Esports World Cup will continue to its tenure as the biggest non-RLCS event of the year.

Outside of the official Rocket League Championship Series, high-octane tournaments are few and far between, with a limit on prize pools in community-run events.

That is, until Gamers8 rolled around in 2023, and subsequently, the Esports World Cup. Now, the Riyadh-centric event is putting Rocket League back in the limelight.

Epic Games pens three-year Esports World Cup deal for Rocket League and Fortnite

Rocket League has put on a massive display at the EWC in 2024 and 2025, pulling in a peak viewership of 230,000, beating this season’s recent Kick-Off LAN in Copenhagen.

As a stalwart of the gaming festival, the soccar title (and its Epic Games cousin, Fortnite) has been announced as the first title to feature in the 2028 tournament.

Epic and the EWC have revealed that both games will be at each of the next three instalments of the tournament.

For Fortnite, a massive Reload Elite Series has been confirmed, featuring a $2,500,000 prize pool, split between global qualifiers and the main event in the summer.

Details of the format, structure, dates, and prize pool of the 2026 Rocket League tournament are yet to be announced and will be revealed in the coming months.

Previous instalments of the Rocket League EWC tournament have evolved to be slightly integrated into the RLCS.

While being a standalone tournament, qualification and seeding were decided through the 2025 RLCS rankings, becoming a warm-up for the World Championships a month later.

So far, France has ruled the EWC in Rocket League – much like how it dominated the RLCS until NRG’s rebellion three months ago – with Team BDS (now Shifters) coming out on top in 2024 and Karmine Corp being crowned champions this year.

Interestingly, with Rocket League’s uncertain future amid a potential crossover with Fortnite, this confirms that we will see a continuation of the esports scene with whichever product we have until 2028.