The Esports World Cup (EWC) has run three full editions — 2024 and 2025 in Riyadh, 2026 in Paris — and each year has produced a different Club Championship winner and a different set of statistical outliers. Team Falcons won back-to-back Club Championships in 2024 and 2025 through consistency rather than any single dominant title; Team Spirit swept Team Falcons 3-0 in the 2025 Dota 2 final; NAVI's 2024 CS2 title gave way to The Mongolz in 2025 and Team Spirit in 2026; and AG.AL broke Team Falcons' streak to win the 2026 Club Championship. Below is a year-by-year, source-checked breakdown.
The Esports World Cup's cross-title Club Championship format rewards organizations for building rosters across completely unrelated games — a chess grandmaster, a Counter-Strike 2 lineup, and a battle royale squad can all be contributing points to the same club's bottom line. That structure produces genuine outliers, but it also makes it easy to blur which team won which title in which year. This piece checks every claim against official EWC Foundation results, Liquipedia records, and contemporaneous match reporting.
An earlier draft of this piece conflated results across the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions — presenting b1t's real 2024 CS2 MVP award and NAVI's 2024 title as if they were the most recent result, crediting Gaimin Gladiators with a 2025 Dota 2 win they didn't have (they were eliminated in the quarterfinals by Team Spirit, who won it), presenting T1's 2024 League of Legends win and jafonso's 2024 EA Sports FC win as current, and citing an unverified Apex Legends result for Alliance. Every figure below has been checked against primary sources and is labeled with its correct year.
Verified EWC Outlier Performances, By Year
Each row below is tied to a specific EWC edition, since the same team or title has produced different — sometimes opposite — results year to year.
| Year | Team / Player | Discipline | Verified Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Team Falcons | Club Championship | Back-to-back Club Champions, 5,200 points across 22 tournaments — gold in Overwatch 2 (via Last Chance Qualifier), silver in Dota 2 and Chess, bronze in CS2, Rocket League, and PUBG |
| 2026 | AG.AL | Club Championship | Ended Team Falcons' two-year reign, finishing with 5,300 points — gold in Trackmania (clinched by Gwendal "Gwen" Duparc) and TEKKEN 8, runner-up in Chess, Free Fire, and Honor of Kings, third in Teamfight Tactics. Won in Paris, the tournament's first edition outside Riyadh, after the event relocated amid regional instability |
| 2024 | Natus Vincere (NAVI) | Counter-Strike 2 | First-ever EWC CS2 champions, beating FaZe, MOUZ, and G2 2-1 in the final. Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy was named tournament MVP — his first career MVP award |
| 2025 | The Mongolz | Counter-Strike 2 | Beat Aurora Gaming in the final for the country's first EWC CS2 title, having entered as the 4th seed |
| 2026 | Team Spirit | Counter-Strike 2 | Beat FUT Esports 3-1 in Paris; Danil "donk" Kryshkovets named MVP |
| 2025 | Team Spirit | Dota 2 | Dropped just one map all tournament and swept Team Falcons 3-0 in the grand final; Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov named MVP |
| 2024 | T1 | League of Legends | Champions, with Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok named MVP |
| 2025 | Gen.G | League of Legends | Beat AG.AL in the final; Kim "Kiin" Gi-in named MVP |
| 2024 | jafonso (Luna Galaxy) | EA Sports FC | Advanced through the Last Chance Qualifier to win the title, beating Young 6-2 in the final — the run that later inspired the EWC's "Jafonso Award" |
| 2024 | Atlanta FaZe | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III | Champions over 100 Thieves; McArthur "Cellium" Jovel named MVP |
| 2024 | XSET | Fortnite (ESL Featuring Fortnite) | Champions over Exceed |
Detailed Breakdown
Team Falcons: Consistency, Not Domination, Wins the Club Championship
Team Falcons' 2025 Club Championship victory is often misread as a sweep of multiple game titles. It wasn't. Their only outright win came in Overwatch 2 — and it came via the Last Chance Qualifier, an unusually difficult path that made them the first-ever club to earn the newly created Jafonso Award for winning after entering through the LCQ. Everywhere else, they finished second or third: runner-up in Dota 2 and Chess, third in CS2, Rocket League, and PUBG. It was that spread across six disciplines, not a single dominant run, that produced the highest point total in the field.
Team Spirit's Dota 2 Run: The Actual 2025 Sweep
The clean 3-0 grand final sweep that gets misattributed to Gaimin Gladiators actually belongs to Team Spirit. They lost only one map across the entire event — a group-stage split against Xtreme Gaming — then won every remaining series without dropping a game, including a quarterfinal win over Gaimin Gladiators, the defending 2024 champions, who were eliminated at that stage. Team Spirit closed the tournament with a 3-0 sweep of Team Falcons in the final.
NAVI, The Mongolz, and Team Spirit: Three Different CS2 Champions in Three Years
CS2 at the EWC has crowned a different champion every single year it's been held. NAVI won the inaugural 2024 title, beating G2 2-1 in the final; Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy earned his first career MVP award off the back of dominant maps 2 and 3. In 2025, fourth-seeded The Mongolz upset the bracket to beat Aurora Gaming in the final, even after Team Vitality — the tournament's highest-ranked team — was eliminated in the semifinal by the eventual champions. In 2026, held in Paris, Team Spirit beat FUT Esports 3-1 for the title, with Danil "donk" Kryshkovets named MVP.
CS2 at EWC uses single-elimination playoffs with no lower bracket — one loss and a team is out. That format rewards a team peaking for one week over the season-long favorite, which is a large part of why the champion has been different every year.
jafonso's Cinderella Run — Correctly Dated to 2024
João "jafonso" Vasconcelos's underdog EA Sports FC run is a real and remarkable story: he lost his opening group-stage match, fought back through the Last Chance Qualifier, and went on to beat Young 6-2 in the grand final. It happened in 2024, not the current cycle, and it's the exact achievement that later led the EWC Foundation to create the Jafonso Award — which Team Falcons became the first club to win in 2025's Overwatch 2 event.
Industry Analysis: What the Club Championship Actually Rewards
The Club Championship's points system credits clubs for top finishes across multiple titles, so the organizations at the top of the standings are rarely the ones winning the most individual tournaments outright. Team Falcons' two Club Championships came largely from consistent podium finishes rather than a stack of first-place trophies — a structural incentive that favors breadth of roster investment over any single title's dominance. Meanwhile, the individual game championships — CS2, Dota 2, League of Legends — have gone to whichever specialist roster peaked hardest for that specific bracket, with almost no repeat champions year over year.
Takeaways for Analysts and Fans
- Track club points, not trophy counts: A club can top the Club Championship standings without winning a single tournament outright, as Team Falcons' 2025 run shows.
- Expect turnover in single-elimination titles: CS2's format has produced three different champions in three years — don't assume last year's winner is this year's favorite.
- Watch the Last Chance Qualifier: Both jafonso (2024) and Team Falcons' Overwatch 2 roster (2025) won titles after entering through the LCQ, showing the path isn't just a formality.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who has won the most EWC Club Championships?
Team Falcons, with back-to-back titles in 2024 and 2025. Their streak ended in 2026, when AG.AL won the Club Championship in Paris.
Has the same team ever won CS2 at the EWC twice?
No. NAVI (2024), The Mongolz (2025), and Team Spirit (2026) have each won a different year, with no repeat champion so far.
Did Gaimin Gladiators win Dota 2 at the 2025 Esports World Cup?
No. Gaimin Gladiators were the defending 2024 champions but were eliminated in the 2025 quarterfinals by Team Spirit, who went on to sweep Team Falcons 3-0 in the final.
What is the Jafonso Award?
An honor created after João "jafonso" Vasconcelos won the 2024 EA Sports FC title having advanced through the Last Chance Qualifier. It's given to any player or team that wins their EWC tournament after entering through the LCQ; Team Falcons' Overwatch 2 roster became the first team to earn it in 2025.
Sources
- Esports World Cup Foundation official press releases and competition pages (esportsworldcup.com)
- Liquipedia Dota 2, CS2, and general Esports World Cup tournament archives
- Arab News tournament coverage, July–August 2025
- Wikipedia tournament infoboxes for the 2024 and 2025 Esports World Cup, cross-checked against primary sources above
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