Recap: EVO 2024 Announcements

by William Hernandez

The February 6 EVO 2024 Announcement Show was absolutely packed with information. For those who might have missed the live event, this recap should help bring you up to speed. Arguably the most important announcement of the show is the change of venue; EVO 2024 will be taking place in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. With that change, the showfloor will now be able to be open all 3 days of the event. It's a bigger and better space so everything they had last year will be able to come back and some sections will even be expanded upon. We can talk more about the venue specifics later, though. Let's get straight into the main events.

The Main Tournament Lineup

The 7 modern games that will be featured at EVO 2024 are Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear -Strive-, Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes, Mortal Kombat 1, and King of Fighters XV. 4 of these games will be making their first appearance at EVO, a sign of how strong the fighting game genre has been doing over the past several months. The classic title that will be represented is Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, one of the titles with the most showings in EVO's history. The most notable absence has got to be Dragon Ball FighterZ, but its exclusion is definitely understandable considering its age at this point. The Super Smash Bros. series also continues to lack any representatives and it doesn't seem like that'll be changing any time soon. EVO is always a great time for exclusive reveals and you can definitely expect some kind of news for basically all of these games. In terms of hype and intrigue, this should be a really exciting year.

Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, Under Night In-Birth II, Mortal Kombat 1, King of Fighters XV, and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike are the 8 main tournament games this year

Some Event Details

If you were looking for some other game to be represented, well, someone else might have you covered. EVO has had various self-hosted tournaments run by private organizers before. Community showcases are good for everyone and you can expect the same this year. These also tend to be livestreamed events so you likely won't miss anything if you stay at home. Speaking of staying at home versus travel, the change of venue also comes with a change in ticket value. This year, a ticket will grant you entry to the venue for all 3 days. It won't come cheap, though. Officially, tickets are $180 each with other fees taking the total price above $200. Accounting for travel and a place to stay, you're definitely looking at spending over $1,000 to fully enjoy the EVO experience. It's a bit of a luxury this time around. So for that price, it definitely makes sense to get the most out of your experience. Artist Valley, Vendor Village, EVO Arcade, the Art Museum, you can expect all that to be back and even more impressive than before. So by all means, take advantage of it all if you go. It's always worth supporting the community when you can.

West Hall of Las Vegas Convention Center

EVO 2024 will be taking place between July 19th and July 21st. You can register for tickets or reserve a room at evo.gg. If you can't go in-person, that's not a problem at all. You can just about catch everything on the livestreams. Here's to hoping that we get some real memorable moments.