Hello everyone!
If you don’t know me, my name is SHIN-A, I’m a player and tournament organizer from Cork. I’m involved with a wide variety of projects in the Irish FGC and within the last month 3 new ones have been announced. This post is a roundup of all three, so there’s a wide variety covered and there should be something for everyone!
IGM Winter Showdown: The Biggest Irish Tournament of 2024 Returns!#
What is IGM?#
If you’re unfamiliar, Irish Gaming Market has been working with the FGC since Summer 2024 to bring grassroots esports tournaments back to a bigger stage in Ireland on a seasonal basis. They are a startup convention business based in Leinster that run the largest dedicated gaming market in Ireland, along with other attractions like a variety of non-gaming related vendors, areas where people can use retro arcade and DDR machines as well as a main stage with a variety of competitions with prizes from their event partners like Red Bull.
This time all the action goes down on November 1st and 2nd in the Royal Marine Hotel, Dún Laoghaire Co. Dublin.
FGC Presence at IGM#
A year ago they added FGC esports tournaments to their events, though this is no “Convention Tournament” by normal standards. The tournaments are all ran at a separate area within the venue and held to the same standards as other high level tournaments. That includes large prize pools, consistent equipment and an experienced team ready to assist with running the tournament.
What does this mean for tournament players? Well entry to the tournaments at IGM grants you free entry to ALL attractions on the convention side of things, meaning your day isn’t over when you’re out of bracket, there’s still plenty to see! On top of everything else, IGM is a 2 day event and we run each tournament over the course of one day, so if all your games are on the one day there’s no need to commit to being there the whole weekend!
What Games are at IGM Winter Showdown 2025?#
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 1ST
Street Fighter 6
Tekken 8
2XKO
Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 2ND
Guilty Gear Strive
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
Under Night In Birth II
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Early Bird Discount#
Signups are now live for this event and anyone that registers in the month of August will net a 25% discount on their venue fee so grab it while you can! There is also merchandise available at checkout such t-shirts, custom event badges with your gamer-tag on them, stickers and more. Proceeds from these help up to continue to run these at the highest level we can, so consider checking them out at https://www.start.gg/tournament/igm-winter-showdown-2025/details
Project Mayhem: New Bi-Weekly locals in Cork City at the National Esports Centre#
What is the National Esports Centre?#
As stated on their website: “Based in Cork, this state of the art hub encompasses Ireland’s first and only professional esports academy, run by WYLDE and home to Ireland Esports. This purpose built venue has been assembled with the latest hardware and esports-centred design to establish new standards.”
The venue is home to the Irish based esports organisation “Wylde” and is equipped with top of the line equipment such as high end, custom built PC’s, best-in-class monitors from their partners at AOC, a large amount of gaming chairs from Noble Chairs and more!
The NEC & FGC Collaboration#
Starting at August 1st 2025, the NEC are now running “Project Mayhem”, a local ran every second week from 5pm to 8pm. For just €5 entry, anyone can come and enjoy what the venue has to offer either just socially, as a spectator or to sharpen their competitive skills offline! All setups are ran on the high end PC’s and monitors mentioned previously with 15 being available for use and pre equipped with Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8 & Guilty Gear Strive as well as space for people to run other games on their own equipment or steam accounts.
The National Esports Centre is an Official Riot Play Club, giving them a partnership with Riot that will continue with the release of the 2XKO Beta on September 9th. Expect to see 2XKO added to the core lineup of games then, along with some other things in the pipeline soon!
Want to get involved? Be sure to join the CorkFGC Discord Server here: https://discord.gg/tTqP2bpupM as this is where all updates about the locals will be posted!
Last but not Least, a new Discord for Tag Fighters in Ireland!#
The next year is bright for enjoyers of Tag Fighting Games, with the release of 2XKO, Marvel Tokon and Invincible VS!
Myself and a few others ran DBFZ Ireland, a discord dedicated to promoting play for that game during and coming out of COVID, though with the decline of player base and support for that game it became very quiet. This has now been converted into TFI or Tag Fighters Ireland, which is the same concept but for all Tag Fighters. That’s not just the new titles, but also other titles such as the Marvel VS Capcom Series, Hunter X Hunter Nen Impact, Dragon Ball FighterZ and others.
This is the place to be to find others in Ireland who play these games, make new friends, get matches and stay up to date with relevant offline events. The first of which being IGM Winter Showdown 2025 as mentioned earlier, which has 2XKO and UMVC3 on the Saturday line-up!
Interested? You can get involved here: https://discord.gg/SHgztjgnt8
Wrap Up#
That’s all from me for now, thanks for reading and be sure to keep up to date with everything here that interests you either through the discords or this website.
As always, support your locals!