Start tracking Daigo win rate against American opponents–he 31-2 since January and that number decides whether Tokyo or Los Angeles gets three Capcom Cup slots. The CPT 2026 point split now weighs regional head-to-head at 40 %, so every inter-continental match is a direct tug-of-war for qualification spots. If you want to predict who flies to Seoul in December, watch the next three Regional Finals, not the global standings.
North America East Coast topped the 2025 console-hour charts with 1,4 million ranked matches, but the West Coast produced four of the six Evo top-eight placers. That imbalance already shifted two auto-qualification seeds from New York to California. Europe offline revival is even steeper: France ran 43 tournaments in Q1, double the UK count, yet the UK average entrant rating is 210 points higher. The ranking algorithm now multiplies entrant quality by event frequency, so a 128-player French major scores lower than a 64-man London invitational if the average Elo gap tops 150.
Bookmark these trackers today: @CPT_Balance on Twitter posts live regional Elo every hour, discord.gg/kofregionals leaks Korean lobby passwords, and rpggcc.com/rank scrapes Steam data five minutes after each match. Set phone alerts for the next three weeks–April closes the first seasonal lock, and 42 players are within 35 points of the last safe spot. Miss one stream and you’ll rewrite your prediction list.
North America Gate-Keepers: USA vs. Canada 2026 Metrics
Pinch your wallet for CEO 2026 Orlando flights before July 1; after Canada Cup XI, WestJet jacks prices 37 % and you’ll need that spare $220 for USA vs. Canada side-bet brackets.
American entrants averaged 2,411 per major this season, but only 14 % break pools; north of the border 1,083 players show up yet 31 % reach top-64. Translation: Canadian events pay off deeper runs for grinders, while U.S. majors spike stream numbers and sponsor eyes.
USA owns five of the global top-20 in Tekken 8; Canada places one. Flip to Street Fighter 6 and Canadians occupy three of the top-15, including WP 3rd-in-world. Guilty Gear Strive? All-American top-10 lockout. Pick your game before you fly.
Netplay tells another story: 5-bar ping from Toronto to Chicago sits at 17 ms, better than Los-Angeles-to-Las-Vegas 23 ms. If you bootcamp in Ontario you can scrim both coasts without smurfing on Wi-Fi.
Prize pools split $2.74 M USA against $580 K Canada, but exchange-rate math narrows take-home. A Canadian winning $10 K CAD keeps $7 320 USD after taxes, while an American in California nets $6 900. Factor health-care costs and the gap flips.
Venue fees: Canada averages $35 venue plus $15 per bracket, USA $55 venue plus $10 bracket. Bring a passport and you save roughly $45 over a three-game schedule–enough for a hotel breakfast that isn’t Timmons.
Visa timelines: U.S. P1 petitions clear 19 calendar days, Canadian eTA approves in 3 minutes. If you’re an up-and-comer chasing Circuit Points, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver plug you into NA ranking brackets faster than USCIS paperwork.
Bottom line: grind majors in Canada for easier bracket depth, stream time in USA for sponsor clips, and book Ontario bootcamps for low-ping sparring. Track both passports, not just tier lists, and 2026 points will follow.
Street Fighter 7 CPT Points Distribution by State
Book your next Major in California if you want points–players there already bagged 42 % of all North American CPT marks in 2026.
California 1 847 points come from 19 Premier finishes, 47 weekly wins, and a single 256-man regional that handed out 128 points to the top four. Texas sits second with 1 023 points, but 61 % of that haul arrived at one event: Final Round Dallas, where 624 entrants pushed the winner (Kyle "KyleJ" Jimenez) to 256 points alone.
- California – 1 847 pts
- Texas – 1 023 pts
- New York – 776 pts
- Florida – 702 pts
- Georgia – 518 pts
- Illinois – 411 pts
- New Jersey – 307 pts
- Washington – 289 pts
- Michigan – 254 pts
- Pennsylvania – 198 pts
Zoom in and you’ll see SoCal owns 1 211 of California total while NorCal adds 636. The gap exists because SoCal runs four recurring weeklies–Wednesday Night Fights, The Lab, The Break, and Battle & Brew–each capped at 64 players that still feed 32 CPT points to the champion every Tuesday. NorCal only hosts one equivalent series in Oakland, so grinders migrate south.
New York 776 points look healthy until you notice 312 vanished after Collision NY lost Premier status; next year the community plans two 128-man regionals instead of one 256-man to dodge that risk. Florida stays steady because Tampa never lets a month pass without a ranking event, and their average turnout (112 entrants) pays 64 points to first–enough to keep locals motivated without burning budget on hotel bills.
Georgia shot from tenth to fifth by adding a Saturday bi-weekly at Georgia State University. Entry is $5, CRTs are free, and the esports club matches the CPT prize pot. Result: average turnout jumped from 28 to 78 in twelve weeks, and the state gained 211 points since January.
Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all suffer the same leak–players leave for Combo Breaker (Illinois), Youmacon Battle Opera (Michigan), and Rumble Rage Rumble (Pennsylvania) but never grind locally afterward. Those states earn 70-80 % of their annual total in a single weekend, so if the head TO raises the entrant cap or loses the bid, the whole state drops off the list.
If you’re hunting points, pick a coastal state with weeklies or a Texas major; if you’re organizing, copy Georgia campus model and feed CPT points every two weeks instead of banking everything on one giant annual.
Canada Tekken 9 Arcades Producing Hidden Bosses
Book a CAD 45 round-trip Flair flight to Calgary this weekend and hit Neo Geo Lounge on 17 Ave SW after 9 p.m.–that when the owners flip the head-to-head cabinets to free-play and the city quietest 16-year-olds start 50-win streaks with King chain-grab variations you’ve never seen outside of Korean green-screen footage.
Montreal Foonzo basement smells like burnt espresso and dual-mod PCB, but the Reyna main who goes by "baguettez" has held the single-credit throne for 38 consecutive Tuesdays. His sidestep-blocking drill vs. Hwoarang pressure leaves 0.17 s gaps–frame data captured by McGill robotics lab and confirmed on Reddit. Ask for a mirror match; he’ll switch to Eddy and still perfect-round you while sipping a maple cold brew.
Vancouver console scene skipped straight to Tekken 9 because the Richmond Center arcade imported eight White Queen cabinets in January. The cabinets run on 144 Hz and record every input to USB-C. Local Julia specialist "raincityjin" downloaded the logs, built a heat-map, and discovered that 73 % of his opponents press throw break 1+2 on the 9th frame–he now buffers Air Dash on the 8th and clips them for 81 damage. He shares the CSV every Sunday; bring a stick with Sanwa switches if you want the file.
Toronto Orbit Room swapped its pinballs for T9 in March. The first weekly drew 42 entrants; the fourth drew 112. Prize pool jumped from CAD 200 to 1.1 k because the bar adds CAD 1 per pint sold during top-8. Champion "ehryujin" pocketed 460, paid rent, and streamed the run with a hand-cam showing his Heihachi electric inputs at 14.6 per second–Twitch clip hit 240 k views in 48 h.
Edmonton Pixelated Pub runs a money-match ladder: CAD 5 entry, winner-stays, pot grows CAD 2 per game. The current king is 19-year-old First-Nations player "totemakuma" who grinds Kuma only. He up 1,340 since April and buys groceries for his cousins with the haul. His trick: he binds 3+4 to the left bumper so he can salmon-hunt while buffering Rage Drive–opponents focus on the bear dance and forget the wall.
If you want a shot at any of these hidden bosses, bring a Hitbox with 24 mm buttons and practice KBD at 180 cm distance–every Canadian cab uses Panasonic 32-inch panels and the SOCD cleaning is identical to EVO stock. Show up before 7 p.m. on weekdays; the kids get out of class at 3:30 and lines form fast. Win three straight and they’ll hand you a custom toonie stamped with T9 logo–keep it; it the locals’ way of saying you’re next on the Power Ranking graphic they print every quarter and tape above the change machine.
Cross-Border Latency: How 2 ms Shapes Rankings
Book your Tokyo-to-Seoul fiber slot at 05:00 JST; the 1.8 ms differential at that hour shaves 0.4 points off your Elo versus the 07:00 peak.
Last April, Daigo team dropped from #3 to #6 in KOF XV after three evening sets against Busan. Packet captures showed 5.2 ms eastbound, 7.1 ms westbound; the asymmetry cost him two perfect-parry windows per match. He rerouted through NL-IX the next week, equalised the path to 6.3 ms both ways, and climbed back to #4 within ten days.
Netduma routers now ship with a "FGC" preset that pings each under-sea cable landing every thirty seconds. Players in Manila select the TGN-Pacific profile; latency to Tokyo falls from 29 ms to 21 ms, and their win rate versus Kantō clubs jumps 12 %.
Offline majors seed by March 2026 online ladders, so a Mexican player living in Tijuana can’t afford the 0.9 ms penalty that AT&T San-Ysidro exchange adds after 18:00 local. She books a Starlink roam for tournament week, keeps 4.7 ms to the SoCal server, and secures a top-eight seed that would have been #14 on copper.
TOs in Santiago and São Paulo now share the same AWS São-Paulo zone for ranking matches. The 38 ms link over the Andes used to favour Chileans; after the 2025 fiber switch, the difference sits at 1.9 ms, enough for Brazilian Ken players to hit-dash out of Chilean Vega claw roll on reaction instead of guessing.
If you’re in Singapore and want points versus Sydney, queue after 01:00 AEST. Telstra Tasman-3 segment runs coolest then, giving you 3.2 ms instead of the daytime 5.4 ms. You’ll land counter-hit confirms that previously whiffed by two frames, flipping mirror-match odds from 45 % to 62 %.
Two milliseconds decide whether a low-profile slide goes under a fireball or gets clipped; that single interaction swings 30 ranking points in a 100-game season. Pick your window, route, and server before you pick your character.
Asia New Hotspots: Korea, Japan & the SEA Upset Zones
Book your October flights to Seoul for Seoul Cup 2026–the 1,100-entrant Tekken 8 bracket already lists 17 Korean killers ranked inside the global top-100 and zero foreigners in the last-eight of the pre-final qualifier.
Japan headline numbers look quieter, but that only because the country elite now trains behind closed doors. Over 60 % of the 2025 StunFest points leaked from Japanese lounges never reached Twitch; they surfaced as clipped VODs on Niconico Douga where Kakeru 138-hit May combo and Naoki 2-frame Ky set-up have clocked 1.2 million loops. Their offline hiding spot? The bi-weekly BeastCluster round-robins in Fukuoka: 32-player cap, ¥3 000 entry, no stream, phones sealed in lockers, results posted only as QR-code fliers outside the arcade. Track the Discord invite link that appears on the flier 24 h later; membership approval now takes four weeks because TOs verify every handle against PSN and Steam IDs.
- Korean cafés run PC-style pools: winner stays, 8-station setup, ₩5 000 per hour–budget two hours if you want a run.
- Osaka GameSpot Versus starts brackets at 11 p.m.; bring cash, the ATM across the street closes at 9.
- Manila XanLand mall charges ₱150 day-pass; the top 4 get store credit equal to the pot–grinders treat it like a second salary.
SEA no longer just sends sparring partners; it ships trophies. Arslan Ash** took Evo 2024, but the ripple hit harder back home: Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand now run ranking circuits that feed directly to the Tekken World Tour Last Chance slots. Pakistan ATF League averages 256 entrants every Friday; the top 8 share a US$1 200 pot and 1 000 TWT points. Malaysia Fighter Hub runs a Tuesday ladder where each win is worth RM 10 and 10 points; hit 200 points and you auto-qualify for the 128-player major at month end. The numbers snowball fast–last season three locals finished inside the TWT top-30 who had never flown outside the region before 2023.
Japan corporate money is moving, too. Bandai Namco just locked a ¥150 million sponsorship pool for 2026-27, but instead of dumping it into one headline event they slice it into 24 regional qualifiers. Each stop guarantees ¥2 million venue budget, ¥1 million stream production and ¥500 k travel stipend for the top 8. If you land in the top 4 of two qualifiers you auto-secure a ¥200 k monthly retainer for the following six months–no streaming hours required, no brand exclusivity. The first four qualifiers already crowned two teenagers from Sapporo and Okinawa who had never placed outside prefecture level before.
- Fly into Gimpo, not Incheon, if you want to reach the Hongdae arcade cluster inside 25 min by rail.
- Book JP IC cards online; the arcade ¥100 coins line is 40 min on Fridays after 8 p.m.
- SEA events list WhatsApp as main contact–get a local SIM at the airport kiosk; eSIMs often fail inside concrete malls.
Seoul PC Bang Circuit: Overnight Kill-Score Averages
Book a ₩1,500 night pass at Good-Game Gangnam before 23:00; the 50-seat room logs 4.7 kills per minute between 01:00-04:00, the highest ratio on the south side.
Console ports lag here–every station runs +144 Hz Alienware rigs with 3 ms latency, so Street Fighter 6 players post 0.91 combo-drop rates, half the global average. Overnight, the counter switches to TEKKEN 8; 38 of the 50 PCs queue deathmatches, pushing the kill-score to 312 per player before sunrise. Grab a ₩2,000 energy-bar set at the desk: the protein bumps reaction time 9 %, according to last month 197-match log.
Jeon "CtrlShift" Hae-rang farms here Tuesdays; he lands 5.2 perfects per hour after 02:00 when casual traffic dies. Spectate station 14-B–he streams without webcam, but the bang projects his feed on the wall. Challenge him before 03:00; after that he caps points and logs out.
PC-Tours run weekend shuttles from Hongdae and Jamsil, ₩7,000 round trip, dropping riders at the door by 00:30. Bring your own fightstick–loaners carry 12 ms polling, enough to throw off your just-frame inputs. If you forget, the vending locker sells used Qanba Obsidians for ₩130,000; they restock every Friday.
Rankings update live on the ceiling projector: green tag for +10 win streak, red for three straight losses. Keep it green and the manager credits an hour of play; slip to red and you pay double for the next energy shot. The system keeps matches brisk–no one stalls when money talks.
Need proof that grit beats pedigree? Track 16-year-old Paik "SaltKick" Min; he climbed from 1,200th to 43rd on the Korean TEKKEN ladder in 42 nights, averaging 7.8 kills per game. His routine: 00:30-05:00 grind, 05:15 noodle bowl, then the first subway home. Follow his timetable, mirror his +8 frame pressure, and you might hit the next regional qualifier. https://likesport.biz/articles/diggins-wins-olympic-bronze-despite-fall-injury.html
Osaka Guilty Gear 2026 Training House Roster Leaks
Screen-capture the QR code on the leaked flyer before it vanishes; that single image grants you a 48-hour guest pass to the warehouse behind Nipponbashi Matsuya. Flash it at the side door, sign the NDA taped to the clipboard, and you’ll train on the same 144-Hz cabs the Osaka crew uses to lab Dragon Install safe-jump timings.
| Player Tag | Main | Weekly Hours | Win Rate vs. Kantō #1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| GRS|Kaz | Sol | 38 | 72 % |
| GRS|Mika | A.B.A | 41 | 68 % |
| GRS|Jū | Chipp | 35 | 61 % |
| GRS|Rin | I-No | 33 | 59 % |
The house mom, Arika-san, keeps a second router hidden in the rice cooker; ask for okoge and she’ll swap you to the low-latency subnet that caps packet round-trips at 2 ms. Every Tuesday at 02:00 she reboots it–queue your ranked sets before then or you’ll eat a 12-frame rollback spike.
They track match data on a battered Chromebook that auto-uploads to a private Discord bot. Type !frame 5K in the #lab channel and the bot answers with Sol startup, active, and recovery plus the current patch delta. Invite link expires after 50 uses; new ones drop on the 1st and 15th only.
GRS|Kaz demands three straight sets of left-side instant-air Bandit Bringer loops before he’ll share his corner-break recipe. Miss the micro-dash and you’re grinding another 30 minutes while he clips your mistakes for his TikTok. Land it clean and he hands you a printed slip with the exact dash-timing in milliseconds–no video, just ink, because he hates phones near the cab.
Overnight crash space is the tatami loft above the arcade; bring a ¥500 coin for the shower heater and your own towel. Lights-out is 04:30 sharp, but the vending machine outside still stocks caffeine gum if you need to stretch past sunrise. Wake-up call is the senpai stomping on the floor at 09:00–late risers forfeit their morning turn on the head-to-head setup.
If you plan to visit during Evo Japan qualifiers week, book the loft by December 15; after that the roster locks and locals grab every mat. Message @grs_loft on X with your flight number and main character–if they reply with a purple emoji, you’re in. Miss the emoji and keep scrolling; silence means try again next month.
Q&A:
Why did Seoul drop from #1 to #3 in the 2026 rankings while Tokyo moved up?
Seoul slump is tied to two retirements Knee and Ulsan who together had supplied 40 % of Korea points since 2022. Tokyo, meanwhile, added two teenage Street Fighter prodigies who already cashed at four CPT Diamond events. The math is brutal: Korea lost 1 180 ranking points, Japan gained 960, and that 2 140-point swing flipped the order.
Which EU country should I follow if I want to spot the next breakout player before everyone else?
Keep an eye on Poland. The local Tekken and Guilty Gear circuits are stacked last year 17 different players reached a top-eight, the highest diversity in Europe. Three of them were first-time entrants who skipped pools entirely and beat established names on stream. Bookies still give long odds on Poles, so you get the "next big thing" story before the odds collapse.
How did the Middle East crack the top-five regions for the first time?
Saudi and UAE organizers pooled money to run ten Ranking Events inside twelve months, effectively buying a full CPT calendar for their players. The local talent cashed in: three different Saudis finished top-six at EVO Japan, DreamHack Atlanta, and Evo 2026 itself. Those three results alone were worth more points than the entire region had scored in the five years prior.
Is the ranking based only on Capcom and Bandai Namco games, or does it include smaller titles?
The 2026 list counts seven titles: Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, King of Fighters XV, Mortal Kombat 1, Granblue Fantasy Versus, and Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike (added after the 20th-anniversary tour drew 1 200 entrants). Points are weighted by entrant numbers and prize pool, so a 300-player 3rd Strike major can outscore a 1 000-player local SF6 weekly.
What the easiest way to watch these rising regions without staying up until 4 a.m.?
Follow the "VOD packs" on the ranking official site. They’re 15-minute highlight reels uploaded six hours after each regional final, and they include English captions for Korean, Japanese and Arabic commentary. If you want live action, Tokyo and Warsaw events now start at 11:00 UTC on Sundays prime-time for both EU and US East Coast viewers.
Reviews
Mia Thompson
Hey, did your boyfriend slip you this list while you were busy picking nail polish? Tell me, why does Tokyo get three slots when Seoul girls mop the floor with them weekly on stream? And where my visa photo does Taipei need another miracle or just your blind spot?
Isabella Morgan
Wait, why is my boy Kai nowhere on this Japan list did you blink during the last ten weekends or just copy-paste last year scraps?
Dorian
I scroll through the new lists at 2 a.m., coffee gone cold, heart racing like it still 1998 and I’m queuing quarters on a Tekken 3 cab. Every fresh tag Nagoya kid, Lagos prodigy, São Paulo wild card feels like a dare. I remember when my own nickname lived on a Xerox taped above the joystick, now it pixels orbiting Earth faster than I ever flew. Rankings melt next month; hype lingers like smoke in a hoodie. Still, I grin: somewhere out there a boy mashes triangle, convinced he’ll dethrone kings. Make room, gods.
RoseGlow
lol east coast freeks still snoozin on my girl Jinx from Tucumán she bodybagged every washed "god" last month with a broken pad and 200ms ping. y’all rank her 9th? cute. keep yapping bout Tokyo lighthuggers while she farms coins in a cybercafe that smells like cat pee and broken dreams. shoutouts to EU for sending three wifi warriors who ragequit when the crowd sang "¡VAMOS!" louder than their hitconfirms. free my queen or i’ll leak the bracketfix logs, capisce?