Esports Federation of India (ESFI) has announced the National Esports Championships (NESC) 2023 to pick the Indian contingent for the upcoming Global Esports Games (GEG) 2023 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
With India participating in three titles in the Open category, the registration for preliminary rounds of the NESC 2023 for DOTA 2 will remain open until 2 September while for eFootball 2023 and Street Fighter 6, registrations will continue until 6 September. The national qualifiers for DOTA 2 will kick off from 4 September while for eFootball 2023 and Street Fighter 6, they will commence from 9 September.
ESFI president Vinod Tiwari said, “With the 15th World Esports Championships underway, the Asian Games 2022 coming up and the Global Esports Games 2023 to follow, Indian esports will be making waves on the global video-gaming map this year.”
Following the conclusion of the NESC 2023, the qualified athletes will compete against leading athletes from Asia in the regional qualifiers for their respective titles. In DOTA 2, India will take on Malaysia and Mongolia on 9 September. The dates for the regional qualifiers for eFootball 2023 and Street Fighter 6 are yet to be announced.
ESFI had also announced qualifiers for DOTA 2 in the women’s category, however, no registration entries from any teams were received.
The GEG23 is scheduled to take place from 11 to 16 December and will feature a total of four major titles: DOTA 2, Street Fighter, eFootball 2023, and PUBG Mobile with all participants being above the minimum age of 18.
The NESC’23 will be played in a double-elimination format. The action from the Championships will be streamed live on ESFI’s official YouTube and Facebook pages.