Red Bull Kumite 2021 – LCQ, Tournament, and Guilty Gear Showcase

Fighting Games
April 29, 2021
Jordan Ashley

The Red Bull Kumite 2021 tournament is gearing up to kick off soon. Since it’s original launch in 2019, Kumite has had a big impact on the fighting community, and it is finally returning to LAN in 2021. This edition is particularly notable as it brings in-person, offline, fighting tournaments back in a big way.

Red Bull is finally giving us top tier Street Fighter V action, showing the biggest players competing against each other live. The event itself kicks off on May 22nd, and at the moment we’re still waiting to see who will qualify and the full list of participants.

Red Bull Kumite

Red Bull Kumite 2021 Tournament

The Street Fighter V tournament is kicking off on May 22nd. The event is going to feature the top 16 players competing for a share of the prize pool. This is how the event is going to work:

  • Selected players (15) and the winner of the Last Chance Qualifiers are heading into a bracket.
  • Players progress through a simple elimination bracket, with the losers heading into a losers bracket.
  • The top players in the winners and losers brackets enter into the final match.
  • Here they go head to head to find the top Street Fighter V player right now.
  • The tournament is being held in London, featuring offline matches.
  • It will begin on May 23rd

What’s really quite exciting about the Red Bull Kumite 2021 tournament, is that it’s offline. Fighting games just don’t work as well online. All esports have suffered in these circumstances, but fighters rely on frame-perfect reactions and inputs. This just gets muffled when playing online, even with fantastic connections and net code. So the Kumite tournament is going to be a great return for in-person fighters. Hopefully, it is just the start of a year that sees in-person fighters returning.

The event is kicking off early with the last chance qualifiers on May 2nd. This is going to find the final competitors from those who haven’t already qualified.

Guilty Gear Strive Showcase

Alongside the Street Fighter V tournament, this event is going to feature a showcase for Guilty Gear Strive. This is an upcoming fighting game, and one that looks basically certain to go straight into a competitive esports scene. The game is going to be developed by Arc System Works. These are the developers behind a lot of titles over the years, but most notably for esports Dragon Ball Fighterz. This title took the normal Dragon Ball tie-in-game brief, and made it into one of the biggest competitive fighting games.

This is the latest instalment in the Guilty gear series. What looks to be making it different this time around though is the competitive focus, and experience that Arc System have had in recent years. The title has so far been praised for its netcode, which should make it a great title for any player to try and get into. This upcoming tournament is going to be a great chance to see the game played in a competitive light, and build a bit more anticipation for the upcoming game.

Red Bull Kumite 2021 Betting and Preview

The participants in the Red Bull Kumite 2021 event still aren’t fully detailed. They’re being announced over time, on the organizer’s twitter page, and thus far we have Kawano, Mister Crimson, IDOM, Hurricane and Tokido confirmed.  Keep an eye out to find which players are heading in, alongside the last chance qualifier event.

While some details are still being withheld, the tournament is going to be a great opportunity for anyone looking at esports betting or Street Fighter V betting in general.

Since we don’t have the full spectrum of competitors yet, it is hard to make a prediction. However, those looking at betting should keep in mind that things could have changed considerably since 2019. That’s when offline tournaments were last held in a widespread way. Keep your eyes peeled for performance in the early rounds to see who is going to be the main contenders now that events are restarting.