SNK World Championship 2025 Finals: All the details from the $4.1m tournaments

SNK Corporation creates absolutely great fighting games, unique and highly respected in the fighting games community (FGC). They are celebrated properly at SNK World Championship 2025! The event is part of DreamHack Atlanta.

When KOF XV was a fresh release, even Arslan Ash praised it, saying the game helps him get better at TEKKEN. FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves (CotW) was extremely hyped, to the level of making the competitors from Capcom excited about the series’ revival. Samurai Shodown is a very special take on the sub-genre of bloody fights, filled with traditional Japanese aesthetics.

With that being said, it is still hard not to notice that the SNK games are somewhat niche. They struggle to break the limits of their loyal player bases. It’s the feature of the FGC: most people have settled within their games and move out only for short explorations.

To step beyond this niche, SNK Corporation cleverly pushes the competitive aspect — in addition to supporting the content additions. SNK World Championship 2025 features a mind-blowing prize pool of $4,1 million! FATAL FURY CotW itself has $2,500,000. With the money from the Esports World Cup, it’s one of the most rewarding fighting games at the moment.

The qualification series attracted many exceptional competitors: even if some of them were on the verge of retirement. The World Championship 2025 Finals reveal the current state of the game and sets plans for the future. The event is also a spectacular fighting games esports show!

The official channels of SNK on Twitch and YouTube broadcast the World Championship 2025 Finals. You can watch the stream above as well.

The event goes on for three days, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1. This period includes the Last Chance Qualifier (LCQ) matches and the top 32 plus 16 brackets.

SNK World Championship 2025 also features Art of Fighting 3. It's a 2D fighter with 3D elements from 1996. The tournament is unlikely a big thing for the general community, but the fans of retro games can follow it on the official streams.

The detailed steam schedule of the SNK World Championship 2025 Finals is in the image below.

Similar to other big official finals, such as Capcom Cup and TEKKEN World Tour, this event features condensed competition for a limited number of participants. To be here, players had to win qualifying events, as there was no leaderboard for SNK World Championship 2025. A few people can advance from the LCQs, though.

In this section, you’ll find the SNK World Championship 2025 results. The table below highlights the final standings.

The announcement about having Samurai Shodown added to the SNK World Championship 2025 came in the middle of the season. It’s certainly a nice surprise! The game continues a legendary series and offers a unique take on bloody fights, very different from Mortal Kombat and the upcoming Invincible VS.

The biggest problem for Samurai Shodown was the unfortunate timing for its release. The 2019 reboot could not have a proper competitive presence due to the pandemic. This World Finals event may not be able to revive Samurai Shodown as a top esports, but the tournament certainly can bring some attention from the casual audience. The game is certainly worth diving in.

There is no other game like The King of Fighters! The formula of having three consecutive characters is very different from popular tag-team fighters nowadays. Also, it requires more versatile skills than the traditional 1v1 games.

The King of Fighters XV was the only title at the previous official league, SNK World Championship 2023. Laggia won the event back then, but the player did not qualify for the current one.

As for the notable participants, it is certainly interesting to keep an eye on the following people.

Without a doubt, it’s the biggest game of SNK World Championship 2025. FATAL FURY is actually the reason why the circuit was stretched for two years.

The first qualifier happened soon after the game’s release — Xiaohai won Evo Japan 2025. Also, Xiaohai became the FATAL FURY champion at Evo France 2025.

The following season featured experiments with the competitive meta. Some characters clearly dominated the scene, but SNK added more fighters to make the tournament picks more diverse.

Eventually, we witnessed this as GO1 climbed to the top of FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves esports. To qualify for the SNK World Championship 2025 Final, the player won Combo Breaker 2025. GO1 became the Evo 2025 champion and also won the FATAL FURY EWC 2025. 

Some other participants to keep an eye on are listed here.

The next circuit feels inevitable! SNK Corporation is expected to reveal details about the World Championship 2026 and possibly the next content season in FATAL FURY: CotW.