Best Esports tournaments:
the biggest and weirdest events to watch on Twitch

Some of the very first games, dating all the way back to 1962’s Spacewar!, had competitive multiplayer stamped on their heart. So it’s no surprise that as the popularity of games has grown, so, too, has the tournament scene. With the advent of streaming technology and websites like Twitch and YouTube Gaming, the audience for esports has exploded. Millions of people now view the biggest tournaments, and some of the prize pools on offer could set most gamers up for life.

Esports aren’t only for gamers; they’re for anyone who enjoys players at the peak of their skills battling it out to prove their dominance of the scene. While it makes sense to start watching esports tournaments of games you play yourself, as the audience for the biggest games has grown, the organisers have done an incredible job of making even the most complex games accessible to new viewers.

MOBAs

Every year, millions of people stream the Dota 2 International and League of Legends World Championship finals. With hundreds of characters to choose from, each possessing individual strengths and weaknesses and loaded up with unique special abilities, games like Dota 2 and League of Legends are incredibly demanding to play, especially to a high standard. Success requires teamwork, strategy, and more than a bit of skill. Which is also what makes them such great games to watch. 

Even if you’re not a strong player, The International and Worlds are an excellent watch because expert commentators break down the battling teams’ decisions play-by-play, explaining the tactics and significance of what you’re seeing. It’s all the more compelling when you realise the size of the tournaments’ prize pools: in 2023, Worlds offered $2.25m to be shared by the winners, and The International’s players took away more than $3.3m. Though this is nothing compared to previous years, back in 2021, because of contributions from fans, The International’s prize pool was over $40m, with the winning team alone walking away with more than $18m.

Whether you’re already a fan or become one from watching The International, we teamed up with developer Valve to celebrate the game and its community on its 10th anniversary, creating two limited-edition Ballantine’s Finest x Dota 2 bottles. Check out the bespoke trailer above, showing off the collectable bottles and feature characters from the game’s universe, including Juggernaut, Lina, Monkey King, Marci, and Brewmaster.

Shooters

For as long as there have been shooters, there have been tournaments, dating back to the original DOOM in 1993. As the genre has grown, so has the esports scene, and today, there are many events you can tune into on Twitch or attend in person.

For shooters with spectacle, you should watch the Overwatch Champions Series, the Valorant Champions Tour, and the Rainbow Six Siege Invitational. These squad-based hero shooters are filled with flashy special abilities and top-tier teamwork. Blizzard Entertainment, Riot Games, and Ubisoft have built their games for spectators, so there’s a lot of on-stream information to follow the action.

If you’re in the mood for something more grounded, the Counter-Strike Majors is the tournament for you. As in Rainbow Six and Valorant, players have a single life per round, but unlike those hero shooters, in Counter-Strike, the closest thing to an Ultimate ability is the AWP, a one-shot kill sniper rifle. Games where players only have a single life are immediately tense, and rounds often build to a nail-biting climax, where a sole survivor is outnumbered by the opposing team and must battle against the odds to win.

At the start of the contest, 50 teams of two qualify and over three days they are whittled down to the winning pair, who walk away with $1m to split. Players compete solo or in teams of five more in all the other games on this list, so this unique Duo dynamic creates a fascinating watch. It’s a very different relationship when you have only one other player to rely on.

However, little will compete with the 2019 Fortnite World Cup, where Epic offered $30m of prizes across different categories. Epic only ran the tournament once but every category offered a life-changing prize for first place. Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, the winner of the solo player tournament, for instance, walked away with $3m. 

Fighting Games

As games with versus competition threaded through their DNA, it’s no surprise that the fighting game community has had the most consistent and established tournament circuit in gaming.  While MOBAs and shooters may have larger prize pools, fighting game tournaments like EVO (the Evolution Championship Series), which has been running for nearly 30 years, laid the path for modern esports events.

Rather than focus on a single game, EVO hosts tournaments for many old and new fighting games. The tournament is entirely open, meaning every event could see upsets from unknown outsiders entering the circuit, especially in the newer games.

The prizes are significantly smaller than other tournaments, with each game starting with a prize pool of $30,000. That can rise on the day, depending on the event’s success, but the smaller winnings do nothing to ease the ferocity of the competition. With most fighting games framed as a 1v1 battle, it raises the tension compared to team games like Counter-Strike and Dota 2.

Unusual games

While the most prominent esports events surround the biggest games, if you’ve got the taste for watching people at the top of their game battle it out to be crowned the top of the field regardless of the title, then there are a lot of other tournaments to follow. Some of them are deeply weird and all the more wonderful for it. 

The Geoguesser World Cup  takes things even more niche. In the tournament, competitors load into a random spot on Google Maps street view and race to see how quickly they can use visible landmarks to identify their location. It’s surprisingly compelling to watch someone work out a country from the design of its street signs and narrow it down to the city by the distinctive shape of a church tower.

The success of major esports tournaments has established the format and infrastructure for many niche contests, so if you like the sound of oddball games like competitive Farming Simulator and Geoguesser, keep an eye on Twitch’s Special Events page.

Games Done Quick

While not an esports tournament like the Fortnite World Cup or the Dota 2 International, some of the best spectator events of the year are the Games Done Quick charity streams. Each event is a marathon stream where world-renowned speedrunners gather to show how fast they can glitch through games, revealing their tricks live on camera while raising money for charities like Doctors Without Borders and the Prevent Cancer Foundation. 

Not content to simply complete games quickly, the speedrunners often reveal unusual talents, such as being able to complete The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild while blindfolded.

If you’re new to streaming and want to find a nice entry point, or you’re just looking to see a game you’ve struggled with over the years beaten before your eyes in record time, then you should check out the next Games Done Quick event or look through some of its back catalogue.