Evo Japan 2025 preview: Will Daigo make a comeback, who is the first Fatal Fury champion?

While the fighting game community often waits all year for Evo 2025, this year’s Evo Japan 2025 is just as heavily anticipated.

With a record-breaking number of competitors in attendance, fans are ready for a weekend of nonstop FGC action across every major title. From May 9th-11th, the best-of-the-best fighting game pros will flock to Tokyo’s Big Sight East Exhibition Halls to compete for glory and honour.

With so many titles and competitors packed into Evo Japan 2025, there are a multitude of storylines to keep an eye on. As such, here are some of the biggest talking points ahead of this year’s monumental FGC event.

Evo Japan 2025 features seven of the most popular titles in the fighting game esports scene, including Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 and Guilty Gear -Strive-. A collective prize pool of ¥15m (~£79,400) will inspire competitors in every game to push themselves to the limits.

Ever since Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves came out a few weeks ago, the FGC has been marveling at the fighting game’s exciting gameplay and potential for an esports scene. Now, Evo Japan 2025 will be the first time that fans can watch high-level play from the pros on a massive competitive scale, revealing the game’s meta and competitive viability.

While City of the Wolves isn’t part of the event’s main lineup, this side event is likely to steal a lot of the attention on May 9th, with the FGC curious to see the esports scene form right in front of them. Who will be the pros that rise to the top? What are some of the techniques and characters that were overlooked during the playtests?

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves’ tournament at Evo Japan 2025 is sure to be taken seriously, side event or not. It’s part of the qualifiers for the Esports World Cup 2025 and the road to the SNK World Championship 2025, which has a record-breaking $2.5m (~£1.8m) prize pool with $1.5m (~£1.1m) on the line for the champion.

By far, the largest tournament at Evo Japan 2025 is Street Fighter 6, with 6,536 entrants and accounting for more than 73% of the attendees at the entire event. This is over 1,000 more entrants than 2024, showing the incredible growth of Street Fighter 6, especially in Japan.

Street Fighter 6 has become a prominent presence in Japan’s FGC, largely due to the game’s long-standing legacy and the continued presence of Japanese professionals on stream and at tournaments worldwide. Capcom’s continued support of the Japanese scene has also been of note, with consistent tournaments and enticing prize pools.

Evo Japan 2025 features some of the best Japanese Street Fighter pros in the scene, including Tokido, Shuto, moke, Sako and Nemo. A great storyline to follow will be Daigo Umehara‘s push to be a top player again after a poor performance at Red Bull Kumite. Daigo quit streaming to focus on the esports scene, so this will be a true test of his abilities.

Other popular pros will be heading to Japan for the fight as well, including MenaRD, NoahTheProdigy, Punk, Nephew, AngryBird, Ending Walker and Big Bird. It’s going to be an intense blood bath between all of these top pros.

Massive events like Evo Japan 2025 are often used as a showcase for the FGC, and this weekend will be no different. Developers will be sharing more details about upcoming fighters to get fans excited for new content.

Some of these include: