The world's biggest fighting game tournament is struggling to attract as many competitors

Evo 2026's final registration numbers are out, and there's a clear decline from 2025 The final registration numbers for Evo 2026 have been released. While thousands are still signed up to compete in tournaments for games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, there's a notable drop-off for returning titles when compared to last year. Evo is historically the largest fighting game tournament in the world and it takes place each year in Las Vegas. Capcom, Bandai Namco, and other fighting game developers also use the show to make announcements or debut new characters for their games. As such, a dip in popularity like this is a bit concerning. When the registration numbers were shared on June 12, Street Fighter 6 had the most participants with 2,414. That's significantly less than the 4,228 people who competed in the same game at Evo 2025. Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves all saw similar declines. Rivals of Aether 2 was unaffected, having more entrants than last year. Although Evo didn't bring much attention to the lower registration numbers, people certainly noticed across Bluesky, X, and Reddit. This caused speculation over