What kind of esports at i72 will we see? The organisers of Insomnia the Gaming Festival have confirmed the tournaments, organisations and other initiatives at the event – here’s a quick roundup.
Insomnia will once again take place at the Birmingham NEC, this time from Thursday March 28th to Sunday April 1st 2024 (those are the dates for the LAN/esports area, while the main festival/expo will run from March 29th to 31st).
A notable year for the show, 2024 marks the 25th year of the show, and also brings in a slight name change to ‘Insomnia the Gaming Festival’, as the event celebrates a quarter of a century in bringing the community together.
Commenting on i72, Mussarat Rahman, Head of Marketing at Player1 Events said: “This year Insomnia turns 25, a milestone that symbolises our journey through the evolving gaming landscape, and what a transformation it’s been!
“With a focus on delivering unparalleled experiences for our community, Insomnia is poised to reinforce its status as the UK’s leading gaming event for many more years. We look forward to revealing more about the exciting plans we have in store for visitors for i72 in the coming weeks; keep your eyes peeled.”
£10,000 Valorant Women’s Cup and £5,000 Valorant iSeries Open at i72
The Valorant Women’s Cup is returning for i72, presented by EE and GiantX, boasting a £10,000 prize pool.
Michelle’s Kittens won at i71 (see photo above), beating Escaped Da Kitchen in the final.
There’s more info below:
As mentioned, there’s the separate mixed Valorant iSeries Open, with a £5,000 prize pool, plus an Online Open tomorrow (February 17th) to give teams the chance to win tickets for the LAN:
There will also be daily Valorant tournaments in the Daily Tournament Zone.
Overwatch 2 returns to Insomnia Gaming Festival
Overwatch is back after being missing from i71 last September.
It has a £3,000 prize pool and an online open for teams to get the chance to win tickets to the main LAN event.
There will also be casual Overwatch 2 cups each day in the Daily Tournament Zone.
CS2 iSeries Open
CS2 teams will be able to go head-to-head in the Counter-Strike 2 iSeries Open at i72, featuring a £5,000 prize pool.
There’s also an Online Open happening tomorrow (February 17th) offering tickets to compete in the full LAN open.
League of Legends is back at Insomnia
League of Legends has a £3,000 tournament at i72:
One of the teams taking part, DMG United Kingdom, recently announced their roster for the event: Pigheadd, Mikey, Pure, Yang 03 and ICL Steven.
“This is, once again, a multi-talents team gathered from the university League scene that claimed several championship titles individually,” DMG’s regional manager ICL Steven said.
Rocket League iSeries Open at i72
Rocket League has the lowest prize pool of the main esports tournament games at i72, with a £2,000 prize pool, however it is a 3v3 game, with the others mainly 5v5.
Escape from Tarkov Arena at Insomnia
There’s also a LAN tournament in Tarkov taking place:
Casual tournaments, CoD showmatch, Scan Invitational, NSE student esports finals and Oxbridge Varsity 2024 at i72
More esports activities have been announced at the festival since the publication of this article.
Insomnia Gaming Festival will kick off the Oxbridge Esports Varsity 2024 – read more on that here.
National Student Esports (NSE) will host its British University Esports Championship 2024 finals too, and there will be a Scan Invitational.
A CoD showmatch will also take place:
We’ve listed more below:
Damp is also on board as LAN host:
There will also be a TFT Northern Legends area at the show:
Esports orgs at the i72 expo
UK esports organisation Into the Breach will have a presence at the Insomnia Gaming Festival 72 expo once again.
They will have gaming stations, special guest creators and have some exclusive merch available.
On top of that, the Into the Breach Knight will also be present, with Karoinna cosplaying as the org’s logo mascot.
Fellow UK org Endpoint will also have a stand at i72, will daily challenges in Rocket League and Counter-Strike 2, plus a PC speed building contest.
The org’s UKIC LAN final for division 1 will also take place at the Birmingham NEC:
GiantX will also have a presence at the event.
Content creators and personalities at i72
In terms of content creators, Insomnia has announced that YouTube superstars Jelly and Slogo will be appearing at i72.
To date, 192 content creators and streamers have confirmed to be attending, including the likes of Pyrocynical, High Rollers and Session Zero.
There’s also Jennifer English, the voice of Shadowheart from Baldur’s Gate 3, Aliona Baranova, performance director for Baldur’s Gate 3 and voice behind Corinna the squirrel.
Other special guests and creators at i72 include The Spiffing Brit, UpIsNotJump as well as many others listed on the Insomnia Gaming Festival guests page.
College of Esports at Insomnia 72
College of Esports and its London Legion team and content brand will be attending the gaming festival too.
In the main exhibition space, College of Esports will have a stand in the Education Zone, which will showcase the institution, students and campus facilities.
There will also be a series of broadcasting equipment showing off the bespoke virtual set software used to run a range of projects. Games design students will showcase their new game World War Fruit in the Indie Zone, with attendees able to play the demo.
London Legion will take part in esports tournaments including the League of Legends iSeries competition.
LAN trading card tournaments head to Insomnia Gaming Festival for the first time
While Insomnia has had a social games area in the past, where people generally play Pokémon and Magic The Gathering (MTG), organisers told Esports News UK this is the first time the event will host tournaments for those games.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game tournament will run on Saturday March 30th from 10am, and the MTG one will run on Sunday March 31st also from 10am.
Both tournaments will have participation capped at 16 players (first come first serve), standard format and open registration.
Prizes in the tournaments include card packs, with first to fourth place winning prizes. First place in Pokémon will receive a booster box of Temporal Forces, while the MTG winner will be able to choose two of the Fallout Commander decks and receive eight Murders of Karlov booster packs. There’s more in the link from the tweet below.
Insomnia i73 dates announced
Insomnia 73 will take place at the Birmingham NEC once again from September 4th to 8th 2024, with the LAN running on those dates and the festival/expo from September 6th to 8th.
It will host RuneFest 2024 and a a UK SuperDome esports event will also happen alongside it in Birmingham, which is happening as part of a £3m West Midlands funding boost.
Insomnia the Gaming Festival stats
A press release also revealed some stats around Insomnia.
- Starting as a small LAN event in 1999, Insomnia the Gaming Festival now welcomes over 30,000 visitors through its doors for the gaming festival.
- LAN parties at Insomnia have grown to become the biggest in the UK. More than 2,000 players gather for a weekend of non-stop 24-hour gaming
- 50,000 video games have been played on site
- It’s been the launchpad for over 150 video games
- £2m in prize money has been awarded at Insomnia over the years
- 25,000 content creators and high profile gamers have attended, including DanTDM, AliaA, Sidemen, Syndicate, Yammy, and The Yogscast. Insomnia was also notably referenced in the new documentary, ‘The Sidemen Story’, playing now on Netflix
You can get tickets to i72 on the official Insomnia Gaming Festival website here
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.
