EVO Japan 2025 will feature more attendees and competitors than ever before, as over 8,000 people have signed up to compete at the fighting game event.
EVO Japan is a sister event to the Evolution Championship Series (EVO), the biggest annual fighting game festival event in the world. This year’s event will take place across three days from May 9-11 at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition centre and will welcome thousands more participants than last year’s iteration.
According to Start.gg, EVO Japan 2025 has now attracted 8,795 unique attendees who have all signed up for the event in a huge increase from the 6,797 who attended the year before.
Of those 8,000 plus, the grand majority are all entrants into the Street Fighter 6 (SF6) tournament with a staggering 6,536 competing in that game alone—another significant increase from the 5,089 who competed in the game at EVO Japan 2024. This makes it potentially the second-biggest EVO bracket ever, coming second to SF6’s debut at EVO Las Vegas 2023 which saw 7,061 unique players compete after the game had just released. Last year, EVO 2024 also sported record numbers with 16,252 bracket entries and well over 10,000 unique entrants.
Capcom’s SF6 has exploded in popularity in Japan, selling over 1 million copies in the country alone. With the game’s release on the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 console this Summer, that buzz is only going to keep growing.
The game’s popularity in the region is clear to see as EVO Japan 2025 will see more competitors in SF6 than the rest of its events combined. You can view the full number of contenders, taken at the time of writing, for each game at the event below:
EVO Japan 2025 Games and Number of Entrants
- Street Fighter 6 – 6,536
- Tekken 8 – 979
- Guilty Gear Strive – 693
- Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising – 481
- King of Fighters XV – 294
- Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O (5on5) – 84
- Street Fighter 3: Third Strike (5on5) – 71
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