This weekend we’ll be seeing the return of Evo Japan for its 2025 edition and there’s a ton of stuff to be excited about for this weekend.
With five main games on the roster as well as large team events for two other titles being incorporated into the headline event, there’s going to be top-level action in a wide variety of fighting games and on top of that, announcements and new footage for upcoming content as well. Let’s have a look at what we can expect from Evo Japan this year.
The story of the event is obviously the massive showing for Street Fighter 6 which landed at 6,536 participants, falling a bit short of its launch year numbers at Evo 2023 where it had 7,061 players.
While all other games that returned from Evo Japan 2024 decreased in entrants, as is natural for most games year-over-year, Street Fighter 6 has actually seen a massive increase since last year where it had 4,851 signups.
This makes it the second largest tournament for any fighting game and just goes to show how massive Street Fighter 6 really is in Japan.
Of course, it’s stacked to the roof with not just local competition but global competition as well. Just looking at the top 8 seeds alone, you have Zeta|Kakeru, WBG|MenaRD, FLY|Punk, Reject|BigBird, KSG|Xiaohai, HB|Kawano, AngryBird and DRX|Leshar and with more than 6,000 other names in contention, the competition is going to be out of this world.
While other games may be down in entrants and dwarfed by Street Fighter 6’s absolutely gargantuan numbers, none of them are anything to be scoffed at either. Tekken 8 is second in line with 960 participants followed by Guilty Gear Strive at 676 players, Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising with 474 signups and the regular tournaments being rounded out by King of Fighters 15 at 289 players.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was a bit too new to be included in the main lineup but will have a special tournament hosted at SNK’s booth with the finals to be held on the main stage as well.
Besides those main games, two of Japan’s most prestigious team events have also been incorporated in the main lineup and will be played out as main games in a 5v5 format. Those two events are the Co-Operation Cup for Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike and Virtua Fighter 5: R.E.V.O.’s Beat Tribe Cup.
Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. has more than 85 teams which totals over 425 participants while Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike sits at over 70 teams landing it at more than 350 individual names.
Despite Street Fighter 6 being the main focus of the event, there’s bound to be some absolute top-level competition in each of these games and there’s also several World Tour and Esports World Cup qualifications in play.
For Esports World Cup, the top two placers in Street Fighter 6 will receive qualification while Tekken 8’s four highest placers will make it in. SNK’s official Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves event also holds two coveted spots for the Esports World Cup.
As for official tours, it’s a direct qualifier to Capcom Cup 12 for Street Fighter 6, it’s a Master+ tier event for Tekken 8 on the Tekken World Tour and a Platinum+ tier event on the Arc World Tour circuit for both Guilty Gear Strive and Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising. Finally, it’s also a qualifier for both King of Fighters 15 and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves to the SNK World Championship circuit.
In short, the stakes are through the roof in all of these titles and there’s plenty of hype to be had throughout the weekend.
First of all, Evo Japan 2025 will get a month early look at gameplay for Elena with a build featuring her available at the event.
However, the build will reportedly only feature Elena so if you’re hoping to get a look at overarching system changes or character balance, you’ll unfortunately have to wait until June 5th when the game’s third season kicks off.
Attendees will also get hands-on opportunities with Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves’ first post-launch character Andy Bogard at the event.
Since we have yet to see him in-game in any fashion, it stands to reason that we’ll likely get a full gameplay trailer for him as well, possibly with a release date to follow.
Arc System Works also confirmed that Unika, the next character for Guilty Gear Strive, will be playable at the event. Much like with Andy, it’s highly likely we’ll get to see a gameplay trailer and a release date for her, especially since Unika is already stated to release this month.
In other Arc System Works news, we got a brief look at Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising’s next character Galleon back at Arc World Tour Finals 2024-2025 and it’s likely we’ll get a more proper gameplay trailer and perhaps a release date for her as well.
Although Under Night In-Birth 2 [Sys:celes] next character Izumi isn’t set to release until August, it’s possible we’ll get another update on her after the last one back in March.
Finally, it’s quite likely we’ll get some kind of information or visual for the new upcoming Virtua Fighter, given that Japan is by far Virtua Fighter’s most popular market, since mum’s been the word on that project since its official unveiling back in December of last year.
Outside of the main games, there’s going to be plenty of side tournaments being held as well.
These side tournaments are each organized by different communities so while they won’t be as centralized to find as results for the main games, we’ll be doing our best here at EventHubs to get all of the available results into our main tournament story as usual.
Some of the games which will be seeing side tournament action include Melty Blood Type Lumina, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo Ultra Street Fighter 4, Soul Calibur 6, Vampire Savior (Darkstalkers), BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, DNF Duel, Soul Calibur 2 HD, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Idol Showdown and Fighting EX Layer, though there are way more than just those.
It’s unclear which of these, if any, will be broadcast but if you have a game of choice that isn’t in the main lineup, make sure to keep your eye out on the Twitch category for it and you just may spot some top level action for it from Japan’s finest.
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As for the event schedule, here’s the official Japanese broadcast information with which games will be on which stream throughout the weekend. All times listed are JST.
Time Zone Conversion:
PDT: Subtract 16 hours.
EDT: Subtract 13 hours.
UTC: Subtract 9 hours.
BST: Subtract 8 hours.
CEST: Subtract 7 hours.