At the end of the SNK World Championship 2025 this weekend, SNK’s Yasuyuki Oda took to the stage to announce that the SNK World Championship will be back in 2026 as well.
While this in itself isn’t too big of a surprise, the surprise was that the massive prize pool which we saw this year may not have been a fluke as many had assumed after all — there will be that same crazy amount of money up for grabs in 2026 as well.
While the exact distribution between titles wasn’t stated, the number of $4.1 million for the total prize pool was stated, an absolutely staggering amount of money in the fighting game community.
This is the same amount that was present this year, where the distribution was $2,500,000 for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, $1,000,000 for King of Fighters 15, $500,000 for Samurai Shodown and $100,000 for Art of Fighting 3.
On the announcement, SNK showed these specific titles listed as well and while the first three are hardly surprises, seeing Art of Fighting 3 return was somewhat surprising, although not entirely out of the blue considering SNK have confirmed that they are working on a new entry in the series.
They ended by saying that there will be many more details to come for specifics, such as qualifier tournaments and more precise prize breakdowns, but the news is out — SNK is back big in 2026 with massive money up for grabs for any hopefuls who wish to participate.
Now, if you’ll excuse me… I might just have to go derust in Samurai Shodown.