Evo Japan 2026 has already come to its riveting conclusion. As expected, Street Fighter 6 featured the highest number of entrants as its total almost reached 7,700 players.
Indeed, this is said to be the largest Street Fighter event ever. In fact, it’s probably the biggest fighting game tournament in history. Needless to say, this provides us with an excellent opportunity to gauge where the meta is at by looking at the characters used by the top performing 256 players of the event.
JP and Mai saw the highest amount of usage of the characters. Both characters were represented by 18 players each, but one of the players using Mai only used her as a secondary.
Surprisingly, Kimberly was the third most represented character at the event with 14 competitors playing her as their mains, and one more used Kimberly as a secondary. This is interesting considering that Kimberly is typically seen as being around mid tier at best in Street Fighter 6.
Akuma, Chun-Li, Blanka, Ed, M. Bison, Juri, Luke and Rashid also featured plenty of usage at Evo Japan 2026. All of these fighters saw double-digit representation within the top 256.
It’s interesting to note that Sagat and Ryu were used the most often as secondaries (four and three times respectively). Of course, the appeal of Shoto characters like Sagat and Ryu are their basic gameplans that make them easy to pick up.
Every character currently in Street Fighter 6 got used within the top 256 at one point or another, suggesting that Street Fighter 6 is fairly well balanced at the moment. The latest character released, Alex, ended up seeing the least amount of usage at the event.
Check it all out below:
• JP – 18
• Mai – 17 (1)
• Kimberly – 14 (1)
• Akuma – 13 (1)
• Chun-Li – 13
• Ed – 12
• Blanka – 12
• M. Bison – 11 (1)
• Juri – 11
• Luke – 10
• Rashid – 10
• Guile – 9 (1)
• Dhalsim – 9
• Zangief – 9
• Ryu – 8 (3)
• Cammy – 8 (2)
• Elena – 8
• Sagat – 7 (4)
• A.K.I. – 7
• Dee Jay – 7
• Ken – 6
• Manon – 6
• Lily – 6
• C. Viper – 5 (1)
• E. Honda – 5
• Terry – 4
• Marisa – 4
• Jamie – 3 (1)
• Alex – 2 (1)
• Unknown – 1