TEKKEN developer BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America has unveiled the event schedule for its TEKKEN World Tour 2023 Master and Challenger tournaments.
In total there will be nine Master events — large-scale global tournaments — and five Challenger events, which are TEKKEN World Tour regional competitions. This includes Master events at Evo Japan 2023 in March, and North America’s CEO 2023 in June.
The tour will also feature one Master+ event in 2023, which will take place at Evo 2023 in Las Vegas this August. Other Master events announced include Lyon’s The MIXUP 2023 – Round 5, Punishment 2 in La Paz, Bolivia, Combo Breaker Chicago, Battle Arena Melbourne 13, Delhi, India’s FIGHTERS SHOWDOWN 2023 and UK event VS Fighting XI.
As highlighted by the amount of international LAN events TEKKEN is one of the top-tier FGC titles in the world. Other notable FGC esports titles include Super Smash Bros. and Street Fighter, the latter of which announced an over $2m (~£1.65m) prize pool for its Capcom Pro Tour (CPT).
Tour points are collected across Master and Challenger tournaments, with the top 33 and top 17 competitors garnering points respectively. For the Master+ event tour points will be awarded to the top 49 players. Those at the top of the global leaderboard will advance to the TEKKEN World Tour 2023 Global Finals.
With regards to the Challenger tournaments, the events will be located across the world with Ivory Coast (Paradise Game Battle), Dubai (Slash N Dash Emirates Showdown), Sweden (Headstomper 2023), Malaysia (FV Major 2023) and Belgium (Brussels Challenge Major Edition 2023) all hosting TEKKEN competitions.
In the release, BANDAI also stated that more TEKKEN World Tour 2023 events leading up to the Global Finals will be announced in due course. However, the release does not highlight if these events will enter into the Master of Challenger category.
Making its return for 2023 are TEKKEN World Tour Dojo events. The Dojo system allows tournament organisers to apply for its offline event to be recognised as a Dojo event. If accepted then tour points will be awarded to high-placing participants; depending on the number of entrants this can scale from 1st to 13th.
This is the fifth year of BANDAI’s TEKKEN World Tour. Once again the tour will cross the globe through various LAN events after making its offline return in 2022. The tidal prize pool figure of the 2023 TEKKEN World Tour has not been revealed.
