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Confrontation at the Convention: Fighting Games at Q-Con 2026

·5 mins
Tournament Belfast Round Up
Author
Yreval
Belfast FGC Veteran
After some lean years, is Q-Con becoming a key fixture in the Irish FGC calendar once again?

In the days before IGM and Celtic Throwdown, Q-Con was one of the major fighting game events in Ireland. Starting in 1993 as a tabletop gaming convention, after a few years video games were added to the bill, and by the time the Street Fighter 4 boom hit in 2009, fighting game tournaments had already been part of the Q-Con schedule for a few years.

Some of the action from Q-Con XVI in 2009.

In the early 2010s, conventions such as Q-Con, Eirtakon, and the like were the highlights of the Irish FGC calendar, but with the arrival of Celtic Throwdown in 2015, their importance faded. Last year’s Q-Con was my first since 2017, and while I enjoyed the con as a whole, the fighting game situation was not good - tournaments were given two hours to run on two setups, meaning that entries were capped at 16 and the early rounds were first to 1 - yes, even in GGST.

The 1st place trophy for GGST at Q-Con 2025. It’s 3D printed and depicts Sol and Ky’s weapons, Fireseal and Thunderseal.
On the other hand, I did get this trophy for winning the GGST tournament, but have you seen me play GGST? Have you seen how I usually place in GGST tournaments? When I’m winning the tournament, that’s how you know the standard of play is not good.

When the fighting game tournaments were announced for this year’s Q-Con, though, there was cause for optimism - each tournament would be given a three-hour window and would be at least first to 2 from the start, and with the entry cap raised to 32, there would presumably be more setups available.

General view of the fighting game tournament area during the SF6 tournament. There are four setups, and the leftmost one is mirrored on the main screen.

Out of the four tournaments, I entered SF6 on Saturday afternoon and GGST on Sunday morning. Here’s how they went down, from my perspective:

Street Fighter 6
#

  • Character: Terry (and Marisa, for one game)
  • 1 win, 2 losses
  • =5th out of 9 players
  • Winner: Glassmalco

I got off to a good start with a 3-0 win in the mirror match against WonderDownUnder (owing to the lower-than-expected turnout, the tournament format was changed to first to 3 throughout), before going down 3-0 to eventual winner Glassmalco (Ed). This gave me a losers’ bracket match against Smoke (Alex). I started well, picking up the first game, before Smoke came back to take the next two games. In an attempt to change things up, I switched to Marisa, but to no avail, as he claimed a 3-1 win before beating Groovy_AL and losing to Ethan in the losers’ final.

Guilty Gear Strive
#

  • Character: May
  • 1 win, 2 losses
  • =5th out of 10 players
  • Winner: Jo

I started with a win against Pennma (A.B.A.) that felt closer than the 3-0 scoreline suggested, before a rematch with Apollo (Nagoriyuki) - the player I had beaten to win last year’s tournament. There would be no repeat this year, though, as he showed a major improvement since then and stormed to a 3-0 win. In the losers’ bracket, I was up against Cassapphic (Baiken). It was clear from the outset that she was only here because she had the misfortune to be matched up against Testament player extraordinaire Jo in her first match, as she handled me pretty easily on her way to a 3-0 win. She would then knock out Pennma before losing a rematch against Jo in the losers’ final. Jo had surprisingly been sent to the losers’ bracket by Apollo with a 3-1 win in the winners’ final - now a rematch beckoned in the grand final.

With two 3-1 wins, Jo claimed the tournament, and with it, an 3D printed trophy similar to the one I had won last year, although this one was orange.

Other tournaments
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There were two other tournaments - on the Saturday morning, Mickemmet was the class of the field in a 26-player Super Smash Bros Ultimate bracket, while Shuri31 prevailed in what looks to have been a closely-fought 16-strong Dragon Ball Fighterz tournament on Sunday afternoon.

The rest of the con
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Aside from the fighting game tournaments, most of the rest of my time at the con was spent in the arcade, which was organised by the good people at Base Arcade.

Some people playing arcade games at Q-Con. The games are, from left to right: Galaga, Bubble Bobble, Street Fighter II Champion Edition, and Pac-Man.

The arcade - where all games were set to free play, I might add - included SF2 Champion Edition and Tekken 2, as well as this curiosity:

The Street Fighter II pinball game. The game’s artwork depicts Ryu, Blanka, Ken, and Chun-Li, who seem more interested in smashing the car than fighting each other. A score of 263,136,620 is shown on the display; this is the high score on this game, which I had just achieved at the time I took this picture.

A close-up of the smash-the-car bonus stage in the Street Fighter II pinball game. Underneath a window in the playfield, there is a flipper which, at certain points in the game, can be used to flip a ball towards a toy car.
They even put the smash-the-car bonus stage in the pinball game. Someone at Gottlieb must have really liked it, huh? I’m not complaining though, it’s really cool.

Of course, the con’s tabletop gaming roots are still very much on show, and there’s plenty of stuff of the kind you expect to see at conventions - an artists’ alley, cosplay (there was an Arcueid cosplayer in the GGST bracket. #MeltyBloodTwiLuminaForQCon2027), panels, and so on.

A small robot combat arena at Q-Con.
The fighting at Q-Con wasn’t confined to the screens - fortunately, it came in the form of this mini Robot Wars arena

Conclusion
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So, should fighting game players start making plans to go to next year’s Q-Con? It’s a mostly - but not entirely - positive picture. The tournaments were much better organised, and the standard of play much higher (at least for the tournaments I played in), than last year. However, the turnout for SF6 and GGST was a serious disappointment - I can only assume that the poor organisation of last year’s tournaments put people off. That said, the SSBU and DBFZ tourneys did draw decent crowds, and the pieces are all in place for some excellent fighting game action at next year’s Q-Con. Shoutouts to Azhar and SpookySketches for running a great fighting game tournament area.

Details are obviously still to be confirmed, but expect the next Q-Con to take place at QUB over the course of a weekend in mid-late June, and for a weekend ticket to cost £20, assuming no major changes from this year. Keep an eye on the Q-Con website and their social media channels for more info when it becomes available. See you then, hopefully!