Arc World Tour 2025-2026 Announcements Recap

I'd be lying if I said the past week has been particularly successful for fighting game fans. While Street Fighter 6 experienced one of its player count peaks last week following Alex's release, the game's fanbase vocally reacted to the character's story alongside the fact that not many balance changes were made to the game. Add to that what appears to be yet another very disappointing update for Tekken 8 that feels like a continuation of Season 2. But it seems at least one publisher is managing to keep us on our toes, and they showed us quite a bit during the Korean finals events across their various games. Here's everything that was announced there.

Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes

Starting small, French Bread's current fighting game had a fairly successful first season which, like Arc System Works' other games, received its latest update in August. Now the studio head and game director, Kamone Serizawa, took the stage to thank fans who showed enthusiasm for the game and presented a short trailer announcing that a new character is in development and will arrive during the year. We didn't get details about the game's continued roadmap, but there's at least something to look forward to on the horizon.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising

The game being developed at cygames gets an announcement that it's receiving its own independent World Tour (an announcement that seemingly ties into the day's final announcement), with the tournament's qualifiers beginning this coming May as part of Evo Japan and running through November. The big news is that the game is working on system changes for version 2.6 which is now in development, alongside a new character set to release at the same time for the game, but for her we only got a teaser showing the arm and parts of her armor. This character will be separate from Season 2, whose final character, Ilsa, came out just last month. Further updates about the game's next update will come in the future but it's unclear when—it seems there's something to wait for this coming May.

Guilty Gear Strive 2.0

The main event undoubtedly arrived. Ken Miyauchi, Strive's producer, presented a spectacular trailer for the game's new version which received an April 9th release date and will introduce quite a few changes to the game, including new mechanics like Counter Blitz and new unique moves for the entire character cast, along with the removal of Wild Assault. The update will also bring a new battle pass system (after 5 years, here it comes) called Blazin Pass through which it will be possible to unlock new outfits for various characters, accessories, and even short stories between characters. On the same day, of course, the game's fifth season will also begin, containing 4 characters. For the first character, Jam Kuradoberi (who unfortunately leaked last year), we're also getting a full gameplay trailer. We also got a design teaser for Robo-Ky who will be the second character in this season arriving in summer, but unfortunately that's where the announcements regarding Guilty Gear Strive's fifth season ended.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls

Unfortunately we didn't really get to talk about this, but when the site wasn't live, we got a pretty big announcement about the addition of Wolverine, Danger, and Magik to the X-Men team in Marvel Tokon, bringing the total to 5 teams in the game, which left many of us wondering what the next teams would look like. Now Spider-Man's team was revealed with a new trailer showing some of the storytelling from Tokon's world, with Spider-Man's team including Ms. Marvel, Star Lord, and today's new announcement that Peni Parker will also join the game's cast under a team called Amazing Guardians. Alongside this we also saw the Knowhere map which looks especially stunning. The game is set to release on August 6th and the next team will likely be revealed in May during Evo Japan.

And that's where all the fun came to an end. Right after all the announcements, Arc System Works CEO Minoru Kidooka took the stage to share that next year's Arc World Tour finals will take place in the United States without specific details on where and when, but the game lineup was revealed and it's definitely smaller than this year's, containing only Guilty Gear Strive and Marvel Tokon. This announcement comes after cygames presented their own championship for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising and what appears to be the end of development for Under Night In-Birth Sys:Celes before what we hope will lead to a new Melty Blood game. Alongside all this, one thing is pretty clear from today: Arc System Works isn't afraid to take real risks with Strive as we see them taking the community's feedback more seriously. We saw this in some of the updates they presented for Marvel Tokon as well, which hopefully soon we'll be able to try in another beta.