Insomnia Gaming Festival and NSE (National Student Esports) have today announced a new partnership that will see the UK student esports and gaming community integrated into the UK festival.
UK university esports body NSE will stage its British University Esports Championship Finals 2022 at Insomnia68 (i68) on April 16th and 17th at the Birmingham NEC.
Over the 2021/2022 academic year, organisers of the British University Esports Championship (BUEC), powered by Intel, say that 2,100 teams from more than 100 UK universities have battled to earn points across a number of esports titles with the aim to be crowned Esports University of the Year.
In addition, Insomnia Gaming Festival contains the biggest UK LAN party which has been taking place for over 20 years, and NSE will now host a first-of-its-kind dedicated LAN party for the UK university student community.
The NSE area will be situated in the main Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) hall of 2,800 attendees and has 120 BYOC seats reserved for UK university students. The NSE area will also have a BUEC Finals stage which will be streamed on Twitch, a spectator area for those who want to watch in person and an NSE partner area.
The UK university community will also have access to Insomnia’s exhibition hall, with a variety of esports tournaments throughout the weekend, and other offerings such as tabletop gaming, cosplay competitions and community areas.
“After not holding Insomnia for two years, we can’t wait to welcome everyone back and it’s brilliant to truly include the UK university community through our partnership with NSE.”
Craig Fletcher, Insomnia/Player1 Events
NSE runs tournaments in games including CSGO, Dota 2, League of Legends, Halo Infinite, Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, Rocket League, Smash Bros, Valorant and Teamfight Tactics. We asked NSE which games will have a live final and were told it will be ‘most of the BUEC’, though the full list of games in the finals are to be confirmed.
Last year, SuperNova Capital acquired Insomnia from previous owners GAME, the UK video games retailer, and Insomnia founder Craig Fletcher joined the exec team to help relaunch the event.
Insomnia68 was announced two months ago as the first physical Insomnia event in over two and a half years, with prior events being cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the covid pandemic.
Craig Fletcher, founder of Insomnia and CEO of Player1 Events, said: “After not holding Insomnia for two years, we can’t wait to welcome everyone back and it’s brilliant to truly include the UK university community through our partnership with NSE.
“It’ll be exciting to see the BUEC Finals live and in-person plus the BYOC area will be another lively area that will keep everyone entertained across the weekend. The UK university esports community is passionate and committed so we’re proud to dedicate space to them in April and support grassroots esports.”
Alex Coulson, NSE MD, added: “It’s a real pleasure to announce that NSE’s BUEC Finals 2022 will be taking place live and in person and in such a brilliant setting with our friends at Insomnia.
“After two years of not being able to run events, the whole NSE team couldn’t be more thrilled to be talking about the return of LAN finals and especially to host increased opportunities to play for the student community through the dedicated NSE BYOC area at Insomnia Gaming Festival.
“This is a real opportunity for our community to come together at a major event to celebrate all things esports.”
NSE is of course not the only UK esports university body in the UK – we also have the NUEL/Amazon University Esports, which recently reported record numbers in its UK/Ireland Winter 2021 Season.
Related content:
- Watch our interview with Craig Fletcher on the future of Insomnia from summer 2021 here
- NSE Winter 2021 university esports winners announced
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
