The Esports World Cup has entered its penultimate week at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, and it's the busiest stretch of the whole seven-week run for silverware. Rocket League, Chess, Rainbow Six Siege, and PUBG Mobile all crown champions between August 11 and 16, while Counter-Strike 2 begins its group stage ahead of closing the entire event out at the Accor Arena next week.
Rocket League: The French Civil War
- Dates: August 12-16
- Prize pool: $1,025,000
- First place: $400,000
Sixteen teams split into two GSL groups of eight from August 12 to 14, with upper bracket matches at best-of-five and lower bracket at best-of-seven. The top four from each group reach an eight-team single-elimination playoff on August 15, where everything is best-of-seven except a best-of-five third-place match.
The narrative writes itself, and it's entirely domestic. Axel "Vatira" Touret has emerged as the face of French esports at this event, appearing at the August 2 Esports Festival on the Champs-Élysées, but Karmine Corp's fans want to see him deliver on the server rather than the stage. Standing in the way are two rival French organisations: Vitality, with Alexis "zen" Bernier and Brice "ExoTiiK" Bigeard hunting an upset of the blue wall, and Gentle Mates. Then there's Evan "M0nkey M00n" Rogez, runner-up at the RLCS 2026 Paris Major, chasing redemption in front of a home crowd for Twisted Minds.
Outside the French bracket, NRG arrive a month from defending their Worlds crown, with SR, MIBR, FURIA, and Falcons all live threats. With the Rocket League World Championship arriving in September, this doubles as the perfect dress rehearsal for the biggest event on the calendar.
Rainbow Six Siege: Eight Left Standing
Playoffs: August 12-15
Prize pool: $2,000,000
First place: $750,000 plus a Six Invitational 2027 slot
The play-ins and group stage are done, and the casualties are notable. Falcons, M80, Enterprise, EDward Gaming, and Virtus.pro all fell short.
The quarter-final bracket:
- Wildcard vs FURIA
- DarkZero vs Weibo Gaming
- FaZe vs Liquid
- Geekay vs Team Secret
Pre-tournament favourites FaZe drawing regional rivals Liquid is the headline tie, while DarkZero enter undefeated and meet Weibo Gaming. The most compelling storyline is Geekay against Team Secret, since the defending champions arrived in Paris written off after a brutal roster turnover, with betting markets doubting they'd even survive the play-ins. They found form at exactly the right moment, and nobody has ever gone back-to-back at this event.
Chess: Carlsen Defends
- Dates: August 11-15
- Prize pool: $1,500,000
- First place: $250,000
After the Last Chance Qualifiers wrapped, eight players still face a play-in stage fighting for just two remaining group-stage spots. Two double-elimination groups then feed an eight-player single-elimination playoff with a third-place decider.
Magnus Carlsen returns as defending champion, having beaten Levon Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura, and Alireza Firouzja in the 2025 playoffs. He's the favourite again in a 10-minute no-increment rapid format that punishes nerves as much as calculation, and where even the strongest player alive can lose to a clock.
PUBG Mobile: Survival Stage, Then the Smash Rule
- Survival Stage: August 11-12
- Grand Final: August 14-16
- Prize pool: $1,500,000
- First place: $250,000
Sixteen teams contest 12 matches across the two-day Survival Stage, with the top six advancing and the bottom ten eliminated. The Grand Finals then run 16 teams across up to 18 matches, culminating in the Smash Rule match-point format on the final day.
Already through: 4Thrives, Aurora, Vitality, GodLike, Horaa, IDA, Nigma Galaxy, Orangutan, S2G, and Team Flash. Still scrapping in the Survival Stage are number-one regional seeds FURIA, AG.AL, and Nongshim RedForce, alongside defending champions Yangon Galacticos, which is a genuinely precarious position for a title holder.
Worth noting the scale here: PUBG Mobile posted the second-highest peak viewership at EWC 2025 with 1,289,269 concurrent viewers per Esports Charts, so the Sunday finale under Smash Rule should draw an enormous audience.
Counter-Strike 2: The Finale Begins
CS2's group stage opens this week with four double-elimination GSL groups of eight teams each. Opening matches are best-of-one, everything after is best-of-three, and the top four from each group advance to playoffs in Week 7. Those playoffs close out the entire Esports World Cup at the Accor Arena, giving the tournament its biggest possible send-off.
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