The 2026 eSports World Cup (EWC) ended in Paris on August 23, closing a seven-week tournament featuring 2,000 players from over 100 countries across 25 competitions and 24 games.
Saudi Arabia was still a key part of the event despite passing the hosting rights to France.
Players from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region took part, showing that its influence has grown well beyond local markets.
Kuwait was one of the biggest winners of the tournament as its representatives produced a series of impressive performances.
Read on as we discuss how MENA helped to shape the 2026 eSports World Cup.
MENA Takes Its Place on the Global Stage
The eSports Foundation still credits Riyadh as the home of the EWC, but Paris has become the first international stop in its planned global expansion.
Players from Kuwait and the wider MENA region performed like they had a point to prove as they competed for some of the biggest professional gaming organisations in the world.
Middle Eastern nations have been investing in their gaming and eSports industries in recent years, and this competition gave them a chance to show how far they’ve grown.
Kuwait’s presence demonstrated that smaller MENA markets could still produce competitors capable of reaching international stages.
Its players have a record of bringing in prize money in the wider EWC ecosystem, so they were not there to make up the numbers.
They showed why Kuwaiti competitors are becoming part of a regional talent pool that could feed into international organisations and tournaments.
Betting and Kuwait’s Growing Gaming Culture
The growth of eSports across the MENA region had created a larger audience around competitive gaming. This has had a knock-on effect in the betting industry.
Professional gaming tournaments have attracted attention from bettors who are more accustomed to wagering on other popular sports in the Middle East.
However, Kuwaiti citizens must tread carefully in this area, considering gambling is still frowned upon by the government.
Despite this, the growing international interest in eSports has created a much larger audience for match analysis, game predictions and online sports entertainment.
Many Arab punters have visited كازينوالكويت.com/en to find sportsbooks linked to reputable online casino platforms.
Blackjack, roulette and slots are big hits in Kuwait, but the growing popularity of gaming in the region has triggered a significant spike in eSports betting.
The EWC 2026 final figures showed just how large the audience had become. More than 850 million viewers followed the competition, while total viewing time reached more than 440 million hours.
The event also sold more than 175,000 tickets to eSports competitions, highlighting the growing demand for live esports entertainment.
This further proved that eSports has become a global entertainment product capable of attracting major audiences, international sponsors and professional organisations.
Making a Difference Despite the Numerical Disadvantage
Kuwait has a smaller eSports population than its MENA neighbours, but it still produced players capable of competing on the biggest stages.
The EWC showed what that regional depth looked like in practice. Kuwait’s eSports community helped bridge the gap between the local gaming scene and the wider MENA market.
Players can develop in their home countries before joining international organisations, competing in different leagues and eventually reaching the biggest tournaments in the world.
Kuwait’s strongest performance at the EWC came from Rocket League, where Mohammad ‘M7md’ Almutairi represented R8 eSports.
R8 had qualified through the MENA route and entered the Paris tournament as the region’s third representative in Rocket League.
They began their EWC Rocket League campaign with a 3-1 defeat to Team Falcons, but the Kuwaiti talent and his teammates responded with a 4-0 win over Five Fears in the elimination stage.
They lost 4-3 against Karmine Corp in the next round, but it was a respectable performance against one of the tournament’s strongest European organisations.
M7md also earned a share of the $20,000 team prize, building on his MENA Open 4 victory earlier in the year. He previously finished second in several other MENA competitions before the EWC.
