The Esports Nations Cup Has Been Delayed to 2027. What Happens Now?

The first Esports Nations Cup was supposed to bring national teams from more than 100 countries and territories to Riyadh this November. Three months before it was due to begin, the entire tournament has been pushed back by a year.

The inaugural Esports Nations Cup will not take place in 2026.

The Esports Foundation announced on August 18 that the competition, originally scheduled for November in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has been postponed until November 2027. The organization said the decision followed an assessment of the wider regional situation and discussions with its partners.

That is a significant change for an event that was already well into preparation. More than 100 countries and territories have official partner status, qualification has been taking place across multiple games, and the tournament was supposed to introduce something still relatively unusual at the highest level of esports: players leaving their normal organizations for a few weeks and competing under their national flags.

The new date is now simply November 2027.

Why was the Esports Nations Cup postponed?

The official explanation is deliberately broad.

The Esports Foundation said the delay follows an “ongoing assessment of the wider regional situation” and that moving ENC to 2027 would give national teams, publishers, partners and fans more certainty. It also stressed that Saudi Arabia remains capable of hosting major events and that other sporting and entertainment events are continuing.

The announcement comes during an unusual year for Saudi-backed esports events. The 2026 Esports World Cup itself was relocated from Riyadh to Paris because of conflict and instability in the Middle East.

For ENC, however, organizers have chosen a full one-year postponement instead of another location.

Official announcement: https://esportsnationscup.com/en/press-releases/ef-postpones-enc-to-november-2027

Sheep Esports also posted the breaking news shortly after the announcement:

This was supposed to be one of esports' biggest new experiments

ENC is not simply another tournament with different branding.

The concept is built around countries and territories rather than professional clubs. A Counter-Strike player who normally competes for Falcons, Vitality or NAVI could instead represent their country. The same idea applies across League of Legends, VALORANT, Rocket League, Dota 2 and the rest of the lineup.

The planned tournament contained 16 games:

Apex Legends • Chess • Counter-Strike 2 • Dota 2 • EA SPORTS FC • Fatal Fury • Honor of Kings • League of Legends • Mobile Legends: Bang Bang • PUBG • PUBG Mobile • Rainbow Six Siege • Rocket League • Street Fighter 6 • Trackmania • VALORANT.

The tournament was originally branded as ENC 26 before today's postponement. Image: Esports Nations Cup

The Foundation describes ENC as the first recurring, large-scale multi-title competition built specifically around national teams. The first edition will remain in Riyadh, while future editions are intended to rotate between host cities.

Watch: The Rise of a New Rivalry — Esports Nations Cup

The official trailer sells exactly that idea: esports rivalries changing from club vs. club to country vs. country. The video is still embedded on the official ENC website, although the site has now changed its main event date to November 2027.

There is already $45 million tied to the project

This is also not a small event being quietly moved down the calendar.

The Esports Foundation previously committed $45 million across the ENC ecosystem:

$20 million — player and coach prize pool $20 million — national-team Development Fund $5 million — incentives for professional clubs releasing their players

That money was designed not only to reward winners but also to encourage clubs and national organizations to actually participate in a format that interrupts the normal professional esports calendar.

The original $45 million ENC funding structure. Image: Esports Nations Cup

The good news for national programs is that the Foundation says the postponement does not cancel its existing Development Fund commitments. Funding and ecosystem-development work with National Team Partners will continue during the extra year.

That matters because some countries have already spent months creating national-team structures, selecting coaches and preparing players.

The awkward question: what happens to qualification?

This might be the most interesting part of the delay.

Qualification was not something ENC was planning to start later in the year. A large amount of it had already happened.

Sheep Esports reports that qualifiers had been running since May and that Mobile Legends: Bang Bang qualification concluded on August 16. Rosters across games had also been locked, meaning teams and players who thought they had qualified for an event three months away are now looking at a competition more than a year away.

That creates some obvious questions.

Do already-qualified teams keep their places?

Can national rosters change?

Will there be another qualification cycle?

What happens to players who retire, change teams or simply fall out of form before November 2027?

The Esports Foundation has not provided all of those answers yet. It says it will work with publishers and National Team Partners over the coming weeks to clarify the revised competition calendar, qualification pathways and other implications of the delay.

And fans noticed exactly that problem.

A discussion on r/mobilelegendsesports quickly included one obvious question:

“will they get another qualifiers for this one?”

Another user argued that waiting a full year feels excessive:

“They can make this like early next year no need to postpone a year.”

The Reddit discussion also shows that reaction to the announcement is mixed, with some users focusing on the regional conflict and others immediately wondering what happens to players who had already prepared or qualified.

For some players, one year is a long time

That became especially clear when Brazilian VALORANT player Gustavo “Sacy” Rossi reacted to the announcement.

His response translates roughly to the point that this was expected to be his final tournament and that 2027 may simply be too late for him.

His reaction highlights a problem that is difficult to solve with a postponed esports tournament. A football World Cup squad can change enormously in a year, and esports moves even faster. Players retire, rosters collapse, organizations leave games and competitive form can disappear within months.

The national teams that eventually arrive in Riyadh in November 2027 may therefore look very different from the teams being assembled in 2026.

ENC is still happening : just much later than expected

The Esports Foundation is being clear on one point: this is a postponement, not a cancellation.

Riyadh remains the planned host. The national-team development programs remain active. The funding commitments remain in place. And the official ENC website has already replaced its former 2026 date with November 2027.

The idea behind ENC is still one of the more interesting experiments in modern esports. Counter-Strike already has a strong history of national competition, fighting games naturally create country rivalries, and games such as League of Legends and VALORANT have huge regional fan-bases that rarely get a true national-team tournament.

But instead of finding out whether that idea works this November, esports will now have to wait another year.

And for the players who have already qualified, the biggest question is no longer who will win the first Esports Nations Cup?

It is who will still be there when it finally begins?