Esports World Cup: final 4 slots up for grabs at DreamHack Dallas
The final 4 slots for the cash rich Esports World Cup 2025 at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is up grabs at the DreamHack Dallas event from 23-25 May, 2025 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, USA. With huge stakes amounting $1.5 million in EWC Riyadh (29th July to 1st August, 2025) we can expect a stiff competition with top Grandmasters lining-up for the qualifier. The DreamHack Dallas offers a good purse of $20000 and the top 4 players will also win flights and hotel to Riyadh to play in the Last Chance Qualifiers, that will ultimately lead to the EWC stage.
The Esports World Cup is an elite multi-genre esports competition that took off in Riyadh Boulevard City last year. This summer the EWC 2025 will offer the largest prize pool in Esports, with $70+ million on the line and feature 24 of the most popular Esports titles across all major gaming genres. Chess gets introduced into Esports this time, the second edition of EWC.
DreamHack founded in 1994 in Sweden, is an ESL Gaming brand specializing in Esports tournaments and other gaming conventions. In 2013, the Guinness Book of Records recognized DreamHack as the world’s largest LAN party.
So far, 19 top Grandmasters have signed up for EWC 2025 with various teams viz.,
1-2 Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana (Team Liquid)
3-4 Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja (Team Falcons)
5-7 Wesley So, Olexandr Bortnyk, Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Team Na’Vi)
8-9 Daniil Dubov, Vladislav Artemiev (Team Spirit)
10 Anish Giri (Team Secret)
11 Arjun Erigaisi (Team Gen G)
12 Ian Nepomniachtchi (Team Aurora)
13 Yu Yangyi (Team Wolves Esports)
14 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Team Vitality)
15 Wei Yi (Team Weibo Gaming)
16 Volodar Murzin (Team AG Global)
17 Ding Liren (Team LGD Gaming)
18-19 Aravindh Chithambaram, Nihal Sarin (Team S8UL)
The DreamHack Dallas EWC qualifier chess tournament details are:
3-day tournament
$20k prize pool
256 players in total
Fully open, no invites
4 qualification spots to Last Chance Qualifiers at EWC
Game mode Rapid 10+0
Courtesy: Esports World Cup X (Twitter page)
GMs Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Ian Nepomniachtchi, have already booked their spots at the EWC through the Champions Chess Tour. The remaining spots are up for grabs through the second leg of the Champions Chess Tour which is scheduled from May 18-23, 2025 and the Last Chance Qualifier promoted by DreamHack Dallas. Entries are restricted to 256 and one can apply through the ESL FACEIT Group Google forms registration link.
Chess.com and EWC together will run the chess tournament at DreamHack Dallas qualifier at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, USA. Anything first, like the Freestyle chess tour that began last year, is sure to generate huge interest in chess worldwide with EWC being the new bridging factor.
The EWC mantra – Few will make it. Fewer will deserve it. Who has what it takes? – coupled with tons of prize money is sure to shake up the world.
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Picture courtesy: EWC official X (Twitter) page
