Esports World Cup 2026 and 4Thrives Walee: How Pakistan Landed on the World's Biggest Gaming Stage

The Esports World Cup (EWC) is an annual, multi-title tournament run by the Esports Foundation — originally the Esports World Cup Foundation — a non-profit funded by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, with ESL FACEIT Group as operating partner. It isn't a single-game championship. It gathers dozens of games under one roof across roughly seven weeks and crowns both individual game winners and, most importantly, one overall Club Champion.

It grew out of the Gamers8 festival and was formally established in 2023. The first edition in 2024 featured 22 titles and a then-record $62.5 million prize pool in Riyadh. The 2025 edition expanded to 25 tournaments and roughly $71.5 million. Per the Saudi Press Agency, EWC 2025 brought together more than 2,500 players and team members and over 200 teams representing close to 100 countries. The Foundation reported more than 750 million broadcast viewers, 350 million hours watched, and a peak of 7.98 million concurrent viewers during Gen.G's League of Legends victory — putting it among the most-watched esports events ever staged. Team Falcons took the Club Championship in both years.

EWC at a glance

This is the detail that confuses most people searching for the event, so let's settle it plainly: EWC 2026 is in Paris.

The tournament was originally announced in January 2026 for a return to Riyadh's Boulevard City. On 20 May 2026, the Esports Foundation confirmed it would instead relocate to Paris — the first time the event has been held outside Saudi Arabia.

The reason was logistical rather than strategic. Regional instability connected to the 2026 Iran conflict disrupted international air travel to Riyadh, and with thousands of players and staff travelling from over 100 countries, organizers moved the event to the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. The opening ceremony was held at La Seine Musicale on 8 July. Foundation CEO Ralf Reichert was firm that Riyadh remains the home of the EWC, framing Paris as a one-year international chapter rather than a permanent move.

Crucially, nothing else changed. Same dates (6 July – 23 August), same $75 million prize pool, same 24-game lineup. So if you have seen "EWC Paris" and assumed it was a different event or a typo, it isn't. Any page still listing Riyadh is simply out of date.

The format and the money

EWC 2026 runs 25 tournaments across 24 games, with the $75 million split across two layers.

More than $39 million goes to individual game championships, each title carrying its own pool plus MVP awards. The remaining $30 million sits in the Club Championship, which is the real engine of the event. Organizations earn points whenever their players place in the top eight of any game's tournament — 1,000 points for a win, scaling down from there. The club accumulating the most points across all titles takes $7 million, provided it has won at least one individual event. Prize money extends all the way to 24th place, which still collects $100,000.

That cross-game structure is what makes the EWC unlike anything else in Esports. It rewards organisations that invest broadly rather than those that get one hot run in one title. New additions for 2026 included Ubisoft's precision racer Trackmania, alongside the return of Fortnite and the arrival of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The wider lineup spans CS2, Dota 2, League of Legends, VALORANT, Free Fire, PUBG Mobile, Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6, Mobile Legends, Honor of Kings, EA Sports FC 26, Rocket League, and even chess.

Three things make this event different from everything around it.

Scale. A $75 million pool dwarfs almost every other competition in the calendar and can reshape an organization's finances in a single summer.

The Club Partner Program. The Esports Foundation selected 40 elite clubs for 2026 — T1, Fnatic, G2, Team Liquid, Gen.G, Team Falcons, S8UL, GodLike and others — each receiving six-figure base funding, collectively reaching an audience north of 300 million fans.

Legitimacy. Simply appearing at the EWC is a signal. It marks a team as belonging in the same conversation as the biggest names in the sport.

The economics behind it explain why clubs chase qualification so relentlessly. Sponsorship remains the backbone of team revenue across esports: sponsorship income reached roughly $1.06 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $1.11 billion in 2026, and for many organizations sponsorship and advertising together account for close to 90% of team-level income. A deep EWC run means sustained visibility in front of a global audience — which is precisely what sponsors are buying.

4Thrives Walee — competing at the Esports World Cup under the name 4Thrives — is a Pakistani PUBG Mobile organization founded on 1 December 2024. In under two years it has become the most successful competitive PUBG Mobile team Pakistan has produced.

The record speaks for itself:

• Won the PUBG Mobile Iftar Showdown 2025 and PMNC Pakistan Spring 2025.
• Finished 3rd at PMSL CSA Spring 2025, becoming the first Pakistani team ever to qualify for the Esports World Cup.
• Placed 7th at the PUBG Mobile World Cup 2025, earning approximately $157,000 — at that point the strongest result by any Pakistani esports team on a world stage. That tournament peaked at 1.3 million viewers, a 145% year-on-year increase.
• Rebuilt in December 2025 after the original lineup departed for Inner Circle Esports.
• Won the PMGO 2026 South Asia Finals in Lahore, then took the PUBG Mobile Global Open (PMGO) 2026 Season 1 title in Jakarta — $62,500, 122 points, three Chicken Dinners and 77 eliminations, finishing ahead of Turkey's ULF Esports and Brazil's FURIA.

That Jakarta victory sealed qualification for the PUBG Mobile World Cup 2026 in Paris.

Current roster

Ahead of the Esports World Cup, Walee, one of Pakistan's leading digital media and technology companies, acquired 4Thrives — which is why the organization now competes under the name 4Thrives Walee. As part of that structure, QuickTopups, a Walee subsidiary, is the official sponsor of the team.

For QuickTopups this is a continuation rather than a first step. The platform previously served as official sponsor of AS i8 Esports for the PMGO South Asia Finals Season 1, and has partnered with the gaming organization Maxebels, including running the PUBG Mobile QuickTopups Showdown. Founded in 2023 and publicly launched in September 2025, QuickTopups is a Pakistani digital gaming marketplace selling PUBG Mobile UC, Free Fire Diamonds, Roblox credits and a wide range of gift cards.

For 4Thrives Walee, institutional backing solves the problem that has held Pakistani esports back for a decade: money that arrives reliably, not match by match.

This isn't an abstract complaint. Arslan Ash, Pakistan's most decorated esports figure, has spoken publicly about players contending with electricity load-shedding during practice, visa rejections that cost them tournaments, and a near-total absence of sponsors willing to take a chance on Pakistani rosters. Talent was never the constraint. Infrastructure was.

Stable ownership changes the daily reality of being a professional player. It funds bootcamps, coaching staff, travel logistics, and equipment — the unglamorous foundation that separates teams who show up from teams who contend. When a roster can focus entirely on preparation, results tend to follow, and 4Thrives Walee's Jakarta run is evidence of exactly that.

For QuickTopups, the logic runs in the other direction. Backing a world-class roster puts the brand in front of an audience of Pakistani gamers who are already buying UC and Diamonds — an endemic audience reached through something they genuinely care about rather than through interruption. It is the local version of what global brands do on the EWC stage, and it keeps sponsorship money inside the Pakistani ecosystem rather than flowing out of it.

Pakistan's scene is at a genuine inflection point, and for the first time the momentum is structural rather than individual.

The Pakistan Sports Board has recognised esports as a sport, following a 2021 Memorandum of Understanding. Through 2025, the Ministry of IT & Telecom, the Prime Minister's Youth Programme, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the British Esports Federation collaborated on a national framework. Then, on 8 July 2026, the federal cabinet approved Pakistan's first National E-sports Policy, opening the door to formal recognition, a dedicated federation, and support for domestic game developers. Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan, chairing the PM's Youth Programme, has stated that around 60 million Pakistanis are directly or indirectly involved in esports.

The talent has been world-class for years. Arslan "Arslan Ash" Siddique, from Lahore, is a seven-time EVO Tekken champion, widely regarded among the greatest fighting-game players in history, and now competes for Twisted Minds. He and fellow Pakistani Atif Butt have made all-Pakistan grand finals a recurring sight at international events. In PUBG Mobile, 4Thrives Walee and AS i8 Esports lead a deepening competitive pool.

What's new is that policy, sponsorship and results are arriving simultaneously. That combination is what turns a country from a source of individual prodigies into an actual esports nation.

• Follow the team on X (@4thrives), Instagram, YouTube and Facebook for schedules, roster news and results.
• Watch PMWC 2026 and EWC broadcasts live on the official PUBG Mobile Esports and Esports World Cup channels. Viewership figures directly influence how sponsors and organizers value teams and regions.
• Engage during matches. Comments, shares and co-streams measurably raise a team's commercial profile.
• Support the local ecosystem. Buying game credits and gift cards through Pakistani platforms like QuickTopups keeps revenue circulating within the scene that funds these teams.

The Esports World Cup 2026 is a landmark on two counts. It is the first edition staged outside Saudi Arabia, running in Paris with a record $75 million prize pool. And it is the stage where a Pakistani organization founded barely twenty months ago arrived as a genuine contender, having beaten the world's best in Jakarta to get there.

4Thrives Walee, backed by Walee and sponsored by QuickTopups, represent a scene that is finally getting the structure to match its talent. Whatever the scoreboard says when Paris wraps up, Pakistani esports has already secured something more durable than a trophy: a permanent seat at the table.

QuickTopups is a trusted Pakistani platform for game top-ups, gift cards and digital gaming products — from PUBG Mobile UC and Free Fire Diamonds to Roblox, Steam, PlayStation, Apple and Google Play gift cards — with instant delivery and local payment options including EasyPaisa and JazzCash.