We’re now on the cusp of one of the largest fighting game events of the year kicking off, which is sure to bring a ton of great action to fans around the world all weekend long.
But on top of that, Evo Japan 2025 is sure to showcase new trailers and announcements for the biggest fighting games around.
We already had our Evo Japan 2025 preview to dig into, however, we’re also going to take a closer look at the most and least likely games to show up with some news at the tournament.
The main games this weekend are Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, and The King of Fighters 15 with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O., and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike all having a large presence as well.
We don’t expect to see something new out of all of these games, but there’s some that are pretty much givens knowing what’s already been revealed for the event.
So let’s dive in to what is and isn’t likely going to show up at some point this weekend.
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
Cygames has so far been the only company to come out and confirm they’ll have something to show off at Evo Japan.
The publisher previously stated Galleon’s gameplay trailer will be released during the event for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising Season 2.
Considering she’s also due out in May, we’ll likely be getting that release date too.
Tekken 8
Tekken 8 Season 2 got off to a bit of a rough start, but the developers have been working to improve the game fairly quickly — and we already know there’s a new patch set for sometime in May.
According to the Season 2 roadmap, Tekken is supposed to receive its next returning fighter this Summer, so Evo Japan is looking like the perfect place to reveal who that’s going to be.
So we’re expecting to see some sort of announcement trailer out of Bandai Namco over the next few days.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves
It’s pretty safe to assume SNK will probably have a new trailer for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves this weekend though we can already tell who it’s going to be for.
Andy Bogard is going to be playable on the ground floor at Evo Japan, so it only makes sense that they’d show off what he can do for the rest of us at home too.
On top of the trailer, we could also get Andy’s release date, which should be coming up in short order.
Guilty Gear Strive
Similarly to Fatal Fury, Arc System Works has already confirmed their next Guilty Gear DLC character, Unika, will be playable at Evo too.
So it’s pretty much the same situation where we should get Unika’s official trailer here very soon as well as her release date.
Virtua Fighter
Sega has been pretty silent about the new Virtua Fighter project since it was first revealed in December, but things could change here over the next few days.
Virtua Fighter has its largest base in Japan, so it’d make sense if Sega wanted to give their home crowd another teaser of what’s coming after Virtua Fighter 5 in the future.
But there’s also a strong chance they’re not ready to show anything else off for the new Virtua Fighter, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Street Fighter 6
Capcom has not been one to keep announcements for big events in Street Fighter 6’s life lately, and we don’t really see that changing this weekend.
They already released Elena’s gameplay trailer for SF6 and that she’s coming on June 5, and we don’t think it’s time yet for them to unveil the Season 3 roster.
Elena will also be playable at the big event, so we’ll at least get to see more of her in actual match footage hopefully.
But who knows, maybe they have some more surprises up their sleeves for fans.
Evo Japan 2025 is set to take place from May 9–11 though that technically means for those of us in the West, the action will be kicking off tomorrow, May 8.