All the Announcements from EVO Las Vegas 2026

If you know fighting games, you probably know EVO—the biggest fighting game event of the year. But some changes are coming for this event following the Saudi acquisition. Without getting into what content creators are saying, the truth is in the numbers, with fewer registrations this year. Part of that likely stems from the fact that EVO is looking to add more events in additional locations around the world, with this year already bringing us a first event in Singapore as well. But one thing is definitely far from changing, and that's the fact that lots of news and lots of trailers are shown at this event, and this year we're talking about a very packed year for news. So here's what we got during this past weekend at EVO!

Dead or Alive 6 Last Round

Let's start with the first teaser that's relevant to my recent review and also because the game came out more or less in time for EVO. After 7 years since the game launched and more or less the first character since March 2020 for Dead or Alive 6, Minato gets a brief teaser in the release trailer for the game's updated version Last Round. Minato is expected to arrive in the coming months. I think the bigger announcement related to the Dead or Alive series during the event was not just that Team Ninja is committed to continuing support for Dead or Alive 6 (and the game needs a lot of help right now), but that the game will continue to develop through upcoming updates and also that the next game in the series is already in active development. When will we see it? Only time will tell—so far we got one teaser at a State of Play event about half a year ago.

Rivals of Aether II

After DOA6 comes back to life, it's worth talking about what might be one of the most interesting announcements of the entire event, and that's the arrival of Mina from the game Mina the Hollower that just came out, who's set to be a new fighter coming in 2027 to Rivals of Aether II!

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game

The release of this game is just around the corner, but how can you get to release without the developers sitting down and showing us the first season's content? Well, now we're getting the presentation that should please quite a few, and that's the first season content for the game launching on July 23rd. The first season pass consists of Uncle Iroh, Ty Lee, Lin Beifong, and Bolin. The fifth character? That's where the audience comes in, and those who pre-order the game will be able to choose from 5 options: Amon, Kuvira, Bumi, Asami, and Tenzin. The game is available for pre-order on consoles and PC, with a future release coming to Switch 2 as well.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising

The past year hasn't been bad for the game, and while it's unclear what Arc System Works' level of support will be for the game in the distant future, the foreseeable future looks very bright for the game, and CyGames cares about the brand enough that they're also holding a dedicated tournament for it this year. Not only that, we're finally seeing the new character coming to the game called Id, all this in addition to system improvements for the game and also its arrival on Switch 2 on September 17th.

Guilty Gear Strive

Arc System Works' popular fighting game is without a shadow of a doubt Guilty Gear Strive, which continues to receive updates, and now as we're in its fifth year, it's finally time to show the next character, which is Robo-Ky, and he looks simply insane. Robo-Ky arrives on July 2nd, and as of now, we haven't gotten a glimpse of the next characters coming, with all we know being that the next character is set to arrive during the upcoming winter.

Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes

And for a character we already knew was supposed to arrive and was shown this weekend, with probably the most Israeli name in French Bread's excellent game, and after a pretty long wait of more or less a year since Izumi's release in the game, we're finally getting a gameplay trailer for Zohar who will arrive during the coming summer months.

BlazBlue Centralfiction

I'll spare you the confusion from reading this headline—yes, the game that came out for Playstation consoles almost a decade ago (in 2016) and came out for PC in 2017 is about to get its first character in almost a decade and its first update since the addition of rollback netcode in 2022. This weekend we finally got a glimpse of Trinity Glassfille along with an illustration from the series' creator, Toshimichi Mori. As of now, there's no gameplay or details regarding her release in the game, but after all this time, we have something new to look forward to!

Invincible VS

Worth talking about this briefly, because while the trailers for these characters didn't come out exactly at EVO but a bit before, the trailers for Universa and The Immortal came out in the past week or so, and the game had a central stage at this year's event. Both characters will be available for first year season pass holders tomorrow on June 30th.

2XKO

From here we get to more or less the heavy hitters of the event as well, and the first among them is undoubtedly the reveal of both Lux and Samira for 2XKO. The trailer itself is relatively short along with brief Lux gameplay, with her full trailer coming during winter. Samira will arrive after that, but we already got a brief glimpse of how she'll look in the game.

Virtua Fighter Crossroads

2027 is definitely shaping up to be the big year for Virtua Fighter to return to center stage, and while we need to see slightly fuller gameplay of the game, tonight we also got the new trailer for a completely new character for the series, Bakunawa Killer, who looks particularly interesting along with fairly brief gameplay. When will be the next time we see the game? Let's cross our fingers that by EVO France in October we'll be able to see something more from the game (including a release date!). In the meantime, the internet is already buzzing with theories about the character's identity (Lei-Fei? Lau Chan? Who knows!).

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves

Very briefly, since in my opinion the Kenshiro trailers didn't do justice to the character at all, including an English voice actor who sounds very uninterested in the character (along with a very unclear translation of "Omae wa mou shindeiru"), a Japanese voice with a nervous compressor and Japanese letters that took me out of focus during the character's trailers for the game. But at least tonight it seems we got corrected trailers that represent the character better (but still with the bored English voice actor), and Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star came out today and is already available in the game. It also seems that during next month we're already expected to get the game's third season pass. What can we expect? We'll find out later.

Tekken 8

One of the most requested characters for Tekken 8 alongside Kunimitsu's return is undoubtedly Bob's return—the character who single-handedly caused Tekken 6 not to return to EVO 2012 (and for those wondering, feel free to search EVO Tekken 6 Bob on YouTube and find the 2011 championship). But tonight we got a full gameplay trailer for Bob in Tekken 8 and he's definitely bigger than ever! Bob arrives in Tekken 8 on August 19th! At the end of the trailer we also got a reveal of Roger Jr., with his gameplay trailer coming during EVO France happening this coming October, and the sharp-eyed will notice a reference to a particularly interesting meme.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls

And finally, a real treat! While overseas pre-orders for the Flexstrike, Sony's arcade stick, are already available, the game meant to accompany it, Marvel Tokon, gets a new and shiny trailer tonight with the latest characters showcasing the full roster that will be available in the game at launch. Tonight's trailer presents the final team called Samurai Raiders and includes Ghost Rider, Loki, Blade, and Deadpool who look simply fantastic (along with Deadpool's fourth wall breaking of course). But beyond that, tonight's big headline is that we're about to get an open beta for the game that will be available this time not only on Playstation 5 but also on PC between July 24-26! Additional details will be revealed later, hopefully along with the game's first season content, with late July and early August definitely going to be very big for the game as it fully launches on August 6th (and the Flexstrike alongside it).

And those were all the big announcements from this year's event! To wrap up, I'll leave you with one of the craziest moments from the Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. tournament showcasing movement in all its 3D fighter glory that managed to impress even Ryan Hart, one of the insane players in the fighting game community.

Until next time, what do you think about all the event's announcements? Waiting for something specific from this list? Did you manage to identify the Roger Jr. meme? Feel free to share with us in the comments!