Everything you need to know about EVO Japan 2018

What's on, when and where to watch.

EVO is the biggest fighting game tournament around, letting players from a huge range of titles duke it out for the ultimate crown. This year marks the first in which the legendary tournament will be making its way to the shores of Japan, hosted in the capital city, Tokyo. Whether you’re into Super Street Fighter or Super Smash Bros, here’s everything you need to know about EVO Japan 2018.

The games

The event is hosting tournaments for six different games including Street fighter 5, Tekken 7, Guilty gear Xrd Rev 2, BlazBlue: Central Fiction, King of Fighters 14, ARMS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.

Japan has an enormous playerbase for most fighting games, meaning the number of entrants will be high, with fierce competition expected in every bracket. We typically only get to see Japan competing abroad at major tournaments in the US, so this will be one of the first big events to see Japan competing against the top global players with the home crowd advantage.

When and where

EVO Japan 2018 is taking place this weekend and kicks off at 9am JST (that’s 4pm PT on Thursday, Jan 25). The event runs until Sunday, Jan 28, closing after the Street Fighter V finals at 9pm JST (that’s 4am PT).

You can watch the finals and big matches on the English EVO stream, but plenty of the Street Fighter 5 bracket will also be hosted in English on the Capcom fighters channel. Finally, if you’re keen to check out the individual game’s pools and early bracket matches, the official EVO Japan OpenRec channel has separate streams for each game (with Japanese commentary). We've embedded the EVO and Capcom Fighter English channels below, so you can easily check what's live at any time.

EVO:

Capcom Fighters:

The full schedule

Handily for everyone involved, the EVO Japan Twitter account posted a full schedule for the tournament in a neat image listing both JST and PT.  If you're not in one of those zones, here's a helpful timezone converter to check your local hours. Here’s the complete list:

If you find image schedules a blight on your eyes, we’ve got the main shebang in a clean and simple bullet point list too. All times are in JST, so once again, here's that time converter.

Friday, Jan. 26

  • 9am - Street Fighter 5, King of Fighters 14, Arms, BlazBlue round 1 pools
  • 12pm - Street Fighter 5, King of Fighters 14, Arms, BlazBlue round 1 pools
  • 3pm - Street Fighter 5, King of Fighters 14, Arms, BlazBlue round 2 pools
  • 6pm - Street Fighter 5 pools, Arms finals, King of Fighters 14 semifinals, BlazBlue semifinals

Saturday, Jan. 27

  • 9am - Street Fighter 5 round 3 pools; Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. round 1 pools
  • 11am - Street Fighter 5 round 3 pools; Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. round 1 pools; King of Fighters 14 finals
  • 3pm - Street Fighter 5 semifinals; Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. round 2 pools; BlazBlue finals
  • 5pm - Street Fighter 5 semifinals; Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. round 2 pools; Pokkén Tournament finals
  • 6pm - Street Fighter 5, Guilty Gear, Tekken 7, Super Smash Bros. semifinals

Sunday, Jan. 28

  • 9am - Super Smash Bros. finals
  • 11am - Tekken 7 finals
  • 2pm - Guilty Gear finals
  • 5pm - Street Fighter 5 finals
Associate Editor

Henry Stenhouse serves an eternal punishment as the Associate Editor of AllGamers. He spent his younger life studying the laws of physics, even going so far as to complete a PhD in the subject before video games stole his soul. Confess your love of Super Smash Bros. via email at henry@moonrock.biz, or catch him on Twitter.

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