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EVO Japan took place during the weekend of May 9th to May 11th, with over 9000 entrants across the five 1v1 brackets and two 5v5 brackets. The 1v1 brackets consisted of Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising and The King of Fighters XV, with the two 5v5 brackets being the 19th Beat-Tribe Cup taking place in Virtua Fighter 5 REVO and the Cooperation Cup Vol. 19 being played in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.
Street Fighter 6
The Street Fighter 6 bracket at EVO Japan saw the entrant count reaching 6661 participants, making it the second largest tournament in Street Fighter‘s entire history since it first launched in 1987, with EVO 2023 being the largest with 7083 entrants, also in Street Fighter 6. A small number of UK players made their way to Tokyo, Japan for the event with the most prominent names being the duo signed to MOUZ; EndingWalker and ProblemX.
ProblemX would finish his run at 513th place, with EndingWalker reaching a final placement of 13th, being the highest placing European player at the event. ProblemX and EndingWalker next competitions will see them at both Brussles Challenge Major Edition 2025 on the weekend of May 17th-18th in Brussels, Belgium and Combo Breaker 2025 in Illinois, USA.
Tekken 8
Tekken 8 is currently facing some backlash from the competitive scene due to balance changes that attributed to more offensive gameplay and discouraged defensive play even more. Despite this, EVO Japan 2025 still had 982 entrants for the event. The UK was represented by many players at the event: JoKa, Gosain, Shirdel, K-Wiss, cupofnoodles, and DewGlider.
Gosain‘s 25th place finish would be the highest placement of UK player’s within the Tekken 8 bracket, with the next highest placing UK player being K-Wiss at 33rd. JoKa would end up finishing in 65th place, Shirdel in 129th, cupofnoodles in 193rd and DewGlider in 257th.
Guilty Gear Strive
The Guilty Gear Strive bracket had 693 entrants in total, with just a single UK player in the entire bracket, that being Tiger_Pop. He would go 3-0 in the first round of Pools and 2-0 in second round of Pools to move onto the Winners Side of the Final Bracket.
Tiger_Pop would end up placing 4th overall after losing to South Korean player Daru_I-No in the Winners Quarter Final and American player RedDitto in the Losers Semi Final.
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
The Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising bracket was one of the smaller sized 1v1 brackets of the main games played at EVO Japan, but still had a large entrant count of 481 participants.
There was only one UK player in the bracket, Default, who ended up placing 33rd overall. GBVSR was also the only 1v1 bracket at the event to have a UK commentator – Virum – on the official broadcast.
Fighting Game Announcements @ EVO Japan 2025
With EVO being a huge celebration of Fighting Games, it’s always the perfect time for some announcements with future games, title updates and any potential DLC.
Starting with Tekken, Bandai Namco announced that the next DLC character would be a returning DLC character from Tekken 7 – Fahkumram. This came with mixed reactions from the community, with many believing that the character should have been in the base roster or different returning character announced instead of returning as DLC again, similar to Tekken 7.
Guilty Gear Strive and Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising had updates on character announcements. Strive players received news that the new character Unika will be available from May 27th.
Whilst Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising received news of the new character – Galleon – also being available on May 27th.
Street Fighter 6 players were able to play a demo of the new character Elena at EVO Japan who will be available on June 5th and also received news of Street Fighter having a crossover with Overwatch 2, with characters from Overwatch receiving cosmetics to transform them into famous Street Fighter characters.
Virtua Fighter announced that the recently released Virtua Fighter 5 REVO will be releasing for PS5, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch 2 with crossplay support and rollback netcode.
Ryu Ga Gotuko Studios, the studio behind the new Virtua Fighter game, shared a new teaser for the 6th instalment in the series – showcasing a returning character – Wolf Hawkfield – and his new look for Virtua Fighter 6.
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