[NEWS] Challengers Finals heads to ESA Esports Arena

Image Credit: https://www.esaesports.com/

The Brawl Stars Challengers Finals in Istanbul are headed to ESA Esports Arena! Hailed as "Türkiye's only professional esports venue" by the company, ESA Esports is a high impact production company in Türkiye with proven experience. Although no official announcement has been made, the venue is mentioned in the Challengers NA rulebook as seen here.

Who are ESA Esports?

ESA Esports was founded in 2020 as a premier operations company for Türkiye and its neighboring regions, the largest by a large margin as of 2026. As a company, they operate Ready4.gg, the third party organizer running the Challengers Türkiye circuit on the road to qualification for Istanbul. ESA is well experienced and is currently partnered with Riot Games as an exclusive VALORANT and League of Legends Esports Ecosystem Partner, powering tier one events in the region. Most notably, they have operated VALORANT EMEA: Challengers Turkiye since 2021, a region that has gone on to send two teams into the tier one franchising ecosystem this past season.

The Venue: ESA Esports Arena

Image Credit: https://www.chapmantaylor.com/projects/42-maslak

Located in the 42 Maslak shopping mall in the heart of Istanbul, the ESA Esports Arena is vast and complex esports space of over 3,800m² and is considered the largest esports arena in Turkiye as a whole. The venue boasts an estimated capacity of 1,600 people in the audience and is one of the most interesting locations BSC has visited in terms of multi-functionality — in addition to being a live arena, ESA also operates the space as a collaborative production environment and studio. The arena will be an "esports first" venue as opposed to taking over existing event space like Brawl Cup in Berlin is with the Uber Eats Music Hall, which is a multipurpose event space.

This will likely be BSC's first live audience studio event at an arena designed for esports - and if fans will not be on site, then it will be a follow up to LCQ 2023, which was held at ESL's studio in Katowice without a live audience. As part of BLAST's promise to bring the Brawl Stars Championship to new locations in 2026, this will be a large jump in quality considering the region's small but mighty BSC presence in FUT Esports. While the Turkish organization's regionally dominant main roster may be international, their academy team of Turkish talent has seen great success qualifying to multiple Monthly Finals. With Challengers TR in full swing, this may be their opportunity to debut their talents and the organization on home soil.