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EVO Japan will return to in-person tournaments in 2023

Offline tournaments are back in Las Vegas and now EVO is ready to make a similar return to Tokyo.

Ozzie Mejia

August 7, 2022 10:55 PM

EVO

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EVO successfully made its return to a live offline setting this year and it doesn't look like the people behind it want to stop there. EVO Japan is also ready to get back to an in-person presentation and will seek to do so next year.

Here's the message from the EVO website:

The Evolution Championship Series (Evo), one of the most pioneering and storied events in gaming, concluded its finals in Las Vegas by surprising thousands of fans in attendance at the finals with the news that Evo Japan will return to Tokyo on March 31-April 2, 2023. Tokyo Big Sight will host the historic fighting game tournaments, including Guilty Gear -Strive-, The King of Fighters XV, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, and TEKKEN 7. More games and event activities will be announced in the coming months, along with details on when registration becomes available.

Tokyo Big Sight (a.k.a. the Tokyo International Exhibition Center) is one of the biggest convention centers in Japan, located in the Ariake Minami district of Tokyo. Exhibition halls are roughly 90,000-100,000 square feet each, meaning there will be ample space to play any fighting game that will be featured. According to a press release issued by EVO representatives, the main Las Vegas weekend featured over 7,000 competitors from 63 countries. A similar turnout is likely expected for EVO's return to Tokyo.

EVO Japan has been on hiatus for the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While a live event for 2023 has been announced, its status is not fully certain. Japan has been far stricter in regards to the pandemic and has not hesitated in the past to lock down parts of the country if the number of infections got out of control. We'll keep an eye on this story as it develops. In the meantime, be sure to check out everything from EVO 2022, including the full list of winners.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?