The Arcade Game That Completed the Picture
When Trackmania secured the final slot in the 2026 Esports World Cup lineup, it completed a peculiar tableau. The arcade racing game—beloved by a devoted European community but hardly a household name—will send 32 players to Riyadh next summer to compete for $500,000 . It is an eccentric capstone to a tournament that spans everything from the global juggernauts of League of Legends and Counter-Strike 2 to the cerebral stillness of chess, now somehow classified alongside first-person shooters and battle royales as an esport .