Plus, we have the full breakdown of Evo Japan 2026 entrants
Street Fighter 6 appears to be flying high right now after releasing their big Alex and balance update this week, and that especially goes for the land of Japan.
The organizers for Evo Japan 2026 recently announced they’re about to have the largest fighting game bracket in history, but there is a few caveats to that.
We already knew from earlier this year that Street Fighter 6 had more than double the amount of entrants than every other game at Evo Japan this year combined, and now that registration has ended, we can get the final numbers of just how many people signed up.
According to the official tournament page, 9,523 players registered for at least one game at Evo Japan 2026, and 7,158 of them did so for Street Fighter 6.
This does break the prior record set by Street Fighter 6 at its first main Evo in 2023 where the game brought in 7,061 registered competitors.
#EvoJapan2026’s Street Fighter 6 registration has broken the record for largest fighting game bracket in history. pic.twitter.com/upCj3Gq3Gt
— Evo (@Evo) March 16, 2026
So that makes it certainly seem like Evo Japan would have the largest fighting game tournament in history, however, that may depend on who you ask.
If you flash back to May 2020 when all offline events were shut down, The Box brought in a staggering 8,158 entrants for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for its online tournament.
There is the ever-ongoing debate as to whether Smash should count as a fighting game, but considering the amount of years the series was at Evo plus Rivals of Aether 2 being on the main Evo 2026 stage this year, we are going to count platform fighters in here.
Despite The Box’s record-breaking registration numbers, though, there is still a strong chance that Evo Japan technically comes out on top after all.
We unfortunately don’t have the time to sift through all of the Smash tournament’s 256 pools to determine just how many players were disqualified for not showing up, but we can get a rough estimate.
From our average calculations, it’s likely that over 2,000 entrants were DQ’d from the event.
So as long as most players actually show up to Evo Japan, it may well have the largest bracket of real competitors though then we’d have to compare those numbers against Evo 2023 for SF6.
To further highlight just how popular Street Fighter 6 is in the space, especially in Japan, the new Alex update appears to have broken the record for most concurrent players in a paid fighting game on PC, which was previously set by the title at launch almost three years ago — and that appears to have largely come from its home country.
As for the rest of the Evo Japan 2026 final entrant placements, Tekken 8 came in second place with 851 players followed by Guilty Gear Strive in third at 692, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising at 531 and 2XKO debuting at fifth with 407 competitors.
1. Street Fighter 6 – 7,158
2. Tekken 8 – 851
3. Guilty Gear Strive – 692
4. Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising – 531
5. 2XKO – 407
6. Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves – 387
7. Vampire Savior – 295
8. The King of Fighters 15 – 251
9. Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. World Stage – 187
10. Melty Blood: Type Lumina – 181
11. Fist of the North Star – 148
12. Under Night In-Birth 2 – 148
Outside of the top five, there’s Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves at 387, Vampire Savior at 295, The King of Fighters 15 at 251, Virtua Fighter 5. R.E.V.O. World Stage with 187, Melty Blood: Type Lumina at 181, and then both Fist of the North Star and Under Night In-Birth 2 at 148 each.
So combined that should equate to 4,078 competitors for the games that are not Street Fighter 6, which means the game is still larger than everything else put together though the gap isn’t as wide as it was at the start of the year — plus thousands of those players are also entering SF6 too.
So we’ll have to wait a few months and see just how many people show up to know if Evo Japan can truly take that record for fighting game tournaments.
This will also be the first Evo event following Saudi Arabia’s Qiddiya taking over full ownership control of the fighting game series with plans to rapidly expand in the coming years.
Evo Japan 2026 is scheduled to take place from May 1–3 in Tokyo, Japan.