Overview of PUBG esports’ record-breaking 2025 and its revolutionary changes for 2026
Throughout 2025, PUBG esports enjoyed strong viewership performance across both regional tournaments and global events. While the regional specifics are not so simple, overall, the esports title enjoyed a clear upward trend for the year. One of gaming’s original battle royale titles, PUBG has its sights set on continuous growth for 2026. Esports Charts takes a look back across PUBG’s 2025 season in detail and also presents what's coming and changing for 2026.
PUBG Esports is setting itself up for long-term growth. They have updated their Global Partner Teams system, which is in place to financially support competing organizations, to include additional incentives for teams based on content creation or joint activities with PUBG Esports. The industry is changing, and leveraging teams as not just competitors but creators, is key to engaging fans nowadays. This new addition offers teams stability while they build their brand and fanbase in PUBG, and a consistent stream of content to keep esports viewership healthy.
Last year, PUBG’s esports calendar hosted four Global Series tournaments and four major events: PUBG Nations Cup, Esports World Cup, PUBG Global Championship, and PUBG Players Masters Invitational. While the Global Series tournaments were popular, it was the Nations Cup that set a new overall record for the series. The PUBG Nations Cup 2025 received 817.8K Peak Viewers, making it the most popular tournament in the game’s esports history, and 2025 was a record-breaking year for PUBG.
2025 marked a new peak for PUBG with its international events
PUBG Nations Cup was the first major international tournament of the calendar, taking place in July. The international showdown pits countries against one another, featuring rosters made of their country’s all-stars. For 2025, the Nations Cup expanded to 24 teams and extended the competition schedule from three to five days, highlighting the global expansion and growing popularity of the esports title: many European countries, like Sweden, Spain, and Poland, took part in the Cup for the first time.
Ultimately, Vietnam took the title at the Nations Cup 2025, defeating South Korea, who were aiming to defend their world championship title for a second time, as well as China and the United States. The Vietnamese roster, with some global championship titleholders, claimed an early, dominant lead; Vietnam won the first few games dominantly, claiming 16 kills and first place in the opening game of the Finals. The last run of the event, Round 18 of the finals, is what saw Vietnam claim the title — with roughly half-a-million Vietnamese fans tuning in.
The following month, the Esports World Cup 2025 took place as the second iteration of PUBG esports at the Saudi Arabian gaming festival. Compared to 2024, the tournament increased its viewership by a significant margin. Peak concurrent viewers increased from just over 100,000 to over 270,000 in 2025, and watch time for the event almost doubled. In total, the $2,000,000 EWC 2025 PUBG event received 2.54M Hours Watched.
Then, the premiere event of the year for the PUBG global esports calendar, the PUBG Global Championship 2025 (PGC), took place in Bangkok, Thailand. In the end, hometown heroes FULL SENSE claimed the title, the Thai organization’s first international title. The world championship was highly anticipated, and hundreds of thousands of viewers tuned in live to follow the action. The worldwide attention for the event saw the PGC receive over 7.5M Hours Watched, making it not only the most-watched PUBG esports event of the year but also the most-watched event in well over four years for the esports title.
Beyond these results, PGC 2025 also served as a testing ground: under the unified message of “PUBG UNITED” both the season-finale tournaments for PUBG and PUBG Mobile were strategically linked, representing a new attempt to integrate cross-title fan experiences into a single, cohesive brand narrative. With pop-up zones, meet and greets, interactive booths, and much more, fans were kept engaged with the PUBG brand, promising the planned global expansion of the esports scene here.
The year was capped off by the PUBG Players Masters Invitational, the ultimate event of PUBG’s TPP (third-person perspective) esports calendar for 2025. The tournament generated over 1M Hours Watched and maintained a strong audience despite its relatively smaller prize pool compared to other major events here. TPP is something we will revisit, looking towards 2026, as PUBG has made a radical change to their esports system.
Throughout the year, the PUBG esports landscape was also home to four Global Series events, two before the Nations Cup and another two before the Global Championship. These $300,000 were highly watched in 2025, and they built on the success of the 2024 events, which were highly popular and received millions of hours of watch time each.
PUBG esports viewership achievements in 2025
For 2025, PUBG saw significant increases across esports viewership metrics year-on-year. Firstly, overall, PUBG esports saw its average concurrent viewership increase by about 25%, now well over 25K Average Viewers for the entire year of esports tournaments, from the Global Series to smaller, local events. Also crucial, the PUBG Nations Cup 2025 set a new Peak Viewers record for the esports game, with over 817K concurrent viewers having tuned in.
For the Global Series tournaments, the PUBG Global Series 7 2025 set a viewership record for the event series with 343.7K Peak Viewers. PUBG has clearly noted the efficacy of these events, and they are set to be expanded significantly for 2026. 
The esports title recorded meaningful viewership performance across regional tournaments: seven out of eight regional tournaments recorded year-over-year growth in Peak Viewers, confirming a broad-based improvement in overall viewership metrics. Rather than being a one-off effect, this trend indicates that viewership at the regional level is stabilizing and becoming more structurally established. Taking specific examples, Korea’s regional PUBG Weekly Series increased its peak viewership by over 150% compared to 2024, and the PUBG Vietnam Series 2025 - Fall set a new local record with 88.5K PV.
PUBG esports 2026 major changes and esports overview
Beginning in 2026, PUBG Esports will face another major turning point with the full transition to TPP. While this shift presents an opportunity to introduce a new competitive landscape and viewing experience, it also represents a challenge that requires careful management of responses from the existing fanbase. The ecosystem is also significantly expanding, now offering 12 PUBG Global Series tournaments as well as the usual international spectacles.
Many competitive fans of the esports title felt that the first-person perspective for the shooter added a tactical element that would be lost transitioning to third-person. However, clearly addressed in the PUBG Esports blog post announcing this change, the move aims to unite the casual and competitive fan bases, and the PUBG Players Tour had already experimented with third-person events to great success in 2025. As noted in the blog post:
“PUBG has always been about strategy, tension, and survival—no matter the perspective. But for most of the 1 billion players who’ve experienced PUBG, that experience has been through TPP. [...] The move to TPP is about bringing the two experiences closer together—aligning what players love to play with what they love to watch.”
PUBG Esports blog, ‘PUBG Esports 2026 Roadmap — A New Era Begins’
Same as 2025, the most popular international events will return to the calendar for 2026. The PUBG Nations Cup will take place in late June, and the Global Championship will take place in December, 2026. The battle royale title has also already been announced for the Esports World Cup 2026, where $2,000,000 will be up for grabs in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These international events will be aiming to build upon the success of last year, continuing to set records and push boundaries for their esports scene.
Along with these events, the expanded Global Series features 12 events, much more than the four hosted throughout 2025. The calendar for these events is yet to be announced, but with a dozen events to scatter around the international tournaments throughout the year, it's unlikely fans will be waiting long for the next event.
For 2026, PUBG esports is poised to go far beyond a simple expansion in the number of events. With major international tournaments scattered throughout summer and winter, there are many chances for the title to reach significant peak viewerships, and with the thoroughly expanded Global Series circuit, 2026 could well be PUBG’s most-watched year in esports. Keep an eye on the local and international circuits for PUBG in 2026 with our detailed viewership database, a tool to keep your overview of esports viewership dynamics, results, and records.
Disclosure: This article was produced as part of a paid collaboration with KRAFTON.
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