Epic.LAN is continuing to expand as one of the biggest LAN events in the United Kingdom and has just announced the return of Team Fortress 2 for the upcoming EPIC 45 event in Kettering.
The cartoonish first-person shooter was published by Valve all the way back in 2007 but still has a dedicated and active community to this day. So much so that British gaming community have voted for EPIC 45 to host an event for the 18-year-old game though this won’t be an esport tournament.
While EPIC 45 attendees will only be playing the game for fun, TF2 has an unexpectedly rich history in UK esports as the game had a surprisingly large presence at the now-defunct Insomnia events. In fact, Insomnia 63 hosted the most-watched TF2 event ever as over 12,500 Twitch viewers tuned in to tally up more than 66,000 hours watched for the 2018 tournament. On top of that, TF2 also gathered the loudest crowd at I69 back in 2022 and I55 in 2015 gathered the third-biggest prize pool for a TF2 tournament ever with £10,000 on the line. The biggest TF2 prize pool was £15,000 at the PC Gamer Showdown event in London back in 2008.
Alongside TF2, EPIC 45 will also feature for-fun community tournaments in WWE 2K25, Forza Horizon 5, and the increasingly popular GeoGuessr which is essentially competitive Google Maps using the website’s Street View feature. As for the esports enthusiasts, EPIC 45 will also host highly competitive tournaments for Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, and StarCraft 2, each with respective four-figure prize pools.
The previous LAN event, EPIC 44, took place back in February earlier this year and was Epic.LAN’s biggest event ever as it played hosted to numerous tournaments and events including the finals of the Rainbow Six Siege T2 EU Circuit.
Now, EPIC 45 will take place at Kettering Leisure Village between July 17th – July 20th 2025 with tickets rapidly selling out. Less than a week ago, Epic.LAN league ops manager Tom ‘Gumpster’ Gumbleton tweeted that only 170 tickets were remaining for the event which is only two months away.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most proud of the latter.
