The Digital Schoolhouse Splatoon 3 Tournament, the UK’s largest school esports event, is back in partnership with Nintendo Switch for 2025.
The initiative is delivered by UK games industry trade body Ukie, which says that this year’s competition will be ‘bigger and better than ever’.
10 regional qualifiers are taking place in England and Northern Ireland, and, for the first time in the eight years running of the tournament, a regional qualifier in Scotland. The latter event took place on February 5th in Barclay’s Eagle Labs Glasgow.
The tournament is also be taking place at venues including the Belong Gaming Arena in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, plus SideQuest Gamers Hub in Charing Cross and the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield.
The grand final will be hosted on April 29th from the Lilian Baylis Studio at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.
Casters Nimmer ‘Nimmz’ Riaz and Bowie ‘bowiethehero’ Alexander are returning for the 2025 grand final, and they will also be judging the Commentator and Observer categories in Digital Schoolhouse’s Creative Careers Competition for students.
Yours truly, Dom Sacco of Esports News UK, will judge the Journalism category once again. There will also be Brand Design and Content Creation categories.
Organisers are looking for other industry guests to engage with the students – contact the email at the bottom of this article to express interest.
And esports tournament provider Blast has been announced as a new partner for the Digital Schoolhouse Splatoon 3 Tournament.
Blast will judge the winners of the Creative Careers Competitions and provide prizes.
“We are so excited to have them on board and look forward to making the 2025 tournament the best ever!” Digital Schoolhouse said.
Digital Schoolhouse has also partnered with Adobe Express for the Esports Creative Careers Competition.
The news comes after Digital Schoolhouse turned ten last year, having reached more than 270,000 pupils, 5,700 schools and 18,000 teachers, with more than 4,500 workshops.
Kucheza Gaming, in partnership with Ukie Digital Schoolhouse and sponsored by the French Embassy in Nigeria, also recently hosted the Kucheza School Esports Championship in FC 25 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at Lagos City College.
And earlier this year, Nintendo announced the Switch 2 console, with a hands-on event taking place in London this April.
Last year, AGSB Esports won the Digital Schoolhouse Splatoon 3 finals in 2024, with Dax Khaymen of St John Fisher Catholic High School winning the student journalism competition.
In 2023, Norton College won back-to-back Digital Schoolhouse Smash Bros finals, and Orlaith Henry of St Mary’s College won the journalism award for an article on the college’s all-female esports club.
Industry guests interested in attending the events and inspiring the students can reach out to organisers by emailing [email protected].
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.
