GeoGuessr has withdrawn from the Esports World Cup festival after players and map creators slammed the team for participating in the event that will be hosted by Saudi Arabia later this summer.

The Esports World Cup Festival is a multi-week event dedicated to gaming culture that will run alongside the Esports World Cup 2025 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from July 7 to August 24, 2025. Organized by the Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF), the festival is set to offer multiple activities, including live music performances, retro arcades, anime cafés, cosplay showcases, creator studios, and interactive exhibits.

GeoGuessr was initially slated to host a Last Chance Wildcard Tournament during Week 3 of the festival (July 21–27), offering a $20,000 prize pool and qualification spots for the 2025 GeoGuessr World Championship.

However, due to community backlash and the fact that dozens of the most popular map creators made a supermajority of the most competitively relevant world maps unplayable in protest, the game’s CEO and co-founder, Daniel Antell, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that GeoGuessr will not participate in the EWC’s festival.

“Since Erland, Anton, and I founded GeoGuessr in 2013, we’ve always strived to be a community-first game. Everyone here at the Stockholm office is a passionate GeoGuessr fan, doing our best to build something meaningful, with you and for you. That said, you — our community — have made it clear that this decision does not align with what GeoGuessr stands for,” Antell explained of the withdrawal.

GeoGuessr, the geography-based guessing game in which players must deduce locations from Google Street View imagery, has announced three offline regional Majors set to take place in Japan, the United States, and Sweden.

These events will serve as key competitions within GeoGuessr’s growing esports ecosystem, offering players a chance to secure World League points and move closer to qualification for the 2025 World Cup Finals.

The first of these Majors, the APAC Major, will be held on May 18, 2025, inside Japan’s iconic Tokyo Tower. The top six APAC players from the World League will compete for a $17,500 prize pool. Beyond the prize money, World League points will be awarded, increasing players’ chances of qualifying for the ultimate showdown later in the year.

Next one is the US Major, which will take place at DreamHack Dallas from May 23-25, 2025. As with the APAC event, the top six GeoGuessr players from the region will battle it out for a $17,500 prize pool and World League points.

The final regional Major, the EMEA Major, will be hosted at the Glitched gaming and LAN festival from June 13-16, 2025, in Jönköping, Sweden. Unlike the other two Majors, this event will feature 12 of the region’s top players and a larger $25,000 prize pool.

Winners of each regional Major will earn 40 World League points, while second and third-place finishers will receive 25 and 15 points, respectively. These points will be applied in determining which players secure spots in the 2025 GeoGuessr World Cup Finals.

In addition to the regional Majors, GeoGuessr has also announced an Open Major, set to take place online from June 27-29, 2025. This event will feature the top 16 World League players who failed to qualify for the World Cup alongside 16 non-league competitors, offering one final chance to earn a coveted spot at the Finals.

The 2025 GeoGuessr World Cup Finals will be held at the KB Hallen in Copenhagen, Denmark, where 16 players will compete for a $100,000 prize pool. Twelve players will qualify via their World League standings, three will enter through Wildcard events, and the Open Major winner will claim the final slot.

GeoGuessr’s transformation into a competitive esport has seen exponential growth, with last year’s World Cup reaching a peak viewership of 254,000 – more than triple the audience of its inaugural edition in 2023.