Fighting Game Events

Region: Birmingham, UK

Games: Tekken (Main), Street Fighter (main), Guilty Gear Strive (Main), Granblue (Main), DBFZ, KOF, MK, UNI2, SF2, 3S, Soul Calibur

Cost: For 2024 - 

£60 tournament pass (allows sign up to the main games)

£10 for most games, less popular games range between £3-5 

£30 Community Pass (Side games only)

£15 spectator pass

VS Fighting (VSF), has been running for a number of years now and is held at Millenium Point. A multi-story conference venue with an IMAX screen, in a city in the middle of the UK. VSF is currently the sole major held within the UK.

This event is the only one now that remains running in the UK, it heavily focuses on Tekken having been part of the Tekken World Tour numerous times, with other main games like Street Fighter (though not a Pro Tour event over the last couple of years), Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes (all being part of the Arc World Tour for 2024) 

This event is nice if you’re in the UK and want to experience a fighting game event for the first time, with it being in Birmingham you are pretty close to the city centre for food and drinks (roughly 15 mins walk). On-site there is usually a pop up stall with the local Dominos pizza as there is usually a collaboration where they offer a personal sized cheese or pepperoni pizza for quite cheap.

With the multi-story layout, you can easily find where your friends are knowing which level or which room the games are at, with plenty of casual setups for you to practice and play on you shouldn’t have a hard time enjoying yourself. For spectators, aside from the IMAX screen used for finals, Tekken usually takes the second largest screen at the venue, which you can find in the ground floor lobby opposite a large set of stairs. If you check my album, you may understand what I mean. For other games, if there is a stream associated you may also have a stage/large TV on a stand for a crowd to watch otherwise you will be crowding round setups to see some matches.

What you may note is the lack of cosplay which if you wish to, you can but please know that cosplay is not a huge thing at this event.

Region: Lyon, France

Games: Tekken, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue, UNI2, DBFZ, KOV:XV, MK1, Melty Blood, 3S (arcade), SF2 (arcade), VSAV (arcade), HNK (arcade)

Cost: For 2024 - 

$65 Competitor pass (allows signup to all games)

$10 for all console based games, $5 for arcade based games

$25 Spectator Pass

MixUP has been running for a number of years in Lyon, France. They changed venues last year due however 2024 brings them back to their usual venue at Rue d'Athènes espace. 

Having ran successfully for numerous years, the event is usually part of numerous world tour events (CPT, TWT, AWT, etc). This year is no different, the event for 2024 is part of the TWT and classed as a Masters event. Both Tekken and Street Fighter 6 are also Esports World Cup (EWC) qualifiers where the top 2 players of both games will be directly invited to the EWC event. Other world tours include Arc Sys World tour, both Guilty Gear Strive and Granblue being Gold events. And Dragonball Fighter Z being a Power event.

The venue is spacious though can be considered far from amenities like restaurants and hotels. The years I’ve been I have had to take a taxi to the venue and back so please make sure to budget enough for that. Whilst restaurants may be a bit further from the venue, the wonderful thing about French events is the inclusion of food trucks allowing you to grab food and drink without straying too far from the venue. There is usually a number of choices of food options allowing you to try something different every day of the 3 day event.

The espace venue having such a single large floor space, allows the event to run with 4 stages, with plenty of seating and set ups for players to compete and play casuals.

The French also love anime and Japanese culture so there are always some cosplayers competing in the games however there is no cosplay competition or display. The focus remains solely on fighting games.

Region: Paris, France

Games: DBFZ, GranBlue, Guilty Gear, Street Fighter, Tekken, KOF:XV, UNI2, SSBU

Cost: For 2024 - 

$65 Competitor pass (early sign up)/$85 normal registration

$10 for all games

$30 Spectator Pass

Ultimate Fighting Arena, the larger cousin of The MixUP, is located in Paris, France. For the 4 years I’ve attended they have always been at the Paris docks and expanded to more buildings in that area, for 2023 they expanded into 3 buildings to cover all games and give plenty of space for setups and stalls. For 2024, UFA covers a number of world tours much like MixUP. Granblue, Guilty Gear Strive and UNI2 are AWT Premium events, Street Fighter 6 is an offline Premier event and Tekken 8 being a Challenger event.

As mentioned, UFA now exists over 3 different buildings, with the main building hosting fighting games and the other one and a half building hosting the platform fighter Smash Bros. The other half of the third building is split between hosting the media lounge and a chillout area where people like myself can set up and edit photos in the media lounge during down time whilst having some complimentary snacks and drinks or have some tasty eats from the food trucks. This is greatly appreciated as the floor is usually too busy for someone to sit and edit/review. Much like MixUP, UFA also hosts a number of food trucks, whilst the venue does have a shopping centre and hotels closer to the venue than its Lyon cousin. It is not lost that there are a number of food trucks with excellent options so that you can eat and game and just hang out with friends, though you have to be mindful of time especially on the last night when the finals end up running long after the food trucks have packed up and stopped serving.

Much like MixUP (the closest and easiest comparison as you may have guessed by now), cosplay and spectators have plenty to watch and casual setups to play on however again, nothing is directly set up for cosplay or non-competitors.

Region: Helsinki, Finland

Games: Granblue (main), Guilty Gear Strive (main), Tekken 8 (main), Street Fighter 6 (main), 3S, UMVC3, UNI2, DBFZ, BlazBlue, Kyanta2

Cost: For 2024 - 

$45 standard pass

$15 per main game. Side games are free to enter

$20 spectator pass

Install, much like a lot of tournaments paused during the COVID pandemic, last ran in 2022. With a 2 year break, this was the first time the group ran a large scale event, close to the centre of Helsinki and I must say, this is an event with so much potential, and one you should try and attend even though it does not hit attendance numbers or have world tours associated (yet) like other events I’ve mentioned in this post.

With a growing community and helsinki city being a great place to visit, Install at their current venue hosts a number of fighting games mainly on console but also with VIEWLIX arcade cabinets available to play on. With their current venue being within the city means public transport is plentiful and easy to use as well as having a large number of food options close by, with some being as close as a 5 minute walk.