FIFA has officially confirmed that Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea city of Jeddah will host the FIFAe World Cup 2026 finals for the first time this year.
FIFAe is FIFA’s esports competition, where players represent their countries in football-based video games rather than clubs. This year’s event covers three separate tournaments: eFootball on console, eFootball on mobile, and Rocket League.
The finals will run from October 16 to 25 at the Abadi Al Johar Arena in Jeddah. Reaching Jeddah required national teams to work through their FIFAe World Ranking, regional qualifiers, and one of five in-person Continental Championships held earlier this year, the last of which is still underway. Only the top-performing nations from each region will make it through to the World Cup stage.
Longtime football fans may wonder why an event called “FIFAe” isn’t played on the FIFA video game series most people grew up with. That’s because FIFA and EA Sports ended their 30-year-long partnership in 2022, and the formerly FIFA-branded game series became EA Sports FC (EA FC), no longer affiliated with football’s governing body.
To keep its esports programme running, FIFA rebuilt its video game lineup around new partners. eFootball is made by Konami, EA’s longtime rival in football games, while Rocket League is made by Psyonix, a property of Epic Games. Both partnerships are run in cooperation with the Saudi Esports Federation, which has hosted the FIFAe Finals since the switch.
For the previous two years, the FIFAe Finals were held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. This year’s move to Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast, has not been outlined by FIFA or the Saudi Esports Federation in any official statement. The announcement came after several weeks of uncertainty over where the World Finals would take place.
That uncertainty followed a difficult year for Saudi-hosted esports events more broadly since the conflict involving Iran broke out. Middle Eastern airspace suffered major disruptions, leading to the Esports World Cup, a separate and much larger tournament series, being moved from Riyadh to Paris earlier in 2026. In August, organisers postponed the planned debut of the Esports Nations Cup, a new country-versus-country tournament originally set for Riyadh this November, by a full year to November 2027 “following ongoing assessment of the wider regional situation.”
However, unlike the Esports World Cup and the Esports Nations Cup, the FIFAe World Cup 2026 finals will remain in Saudi Arabia rather than being moved abroad or postponed. While other major events altered their plans due to regional geopolitical uncertainties, it remains curious why Jeddah was deemed a suitable alternative and whether similar safety or logistical concerns influenced the shift away from Riyadh.
