Honor of Kings is hosting a $3m invitational in partnership with the Esports World Cup

• 12 teams will vie for a $3m prize pool in Honor of Kings
• The invitational will be held at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Honor of Kings wants to be a BIG esports title

Tencent’s mighty MOBA Honor of Kings will be hosting a first-of-its-kind invitational tournament at the Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia this year, with a $3m prize pool up for grabs. The first team to be attending will be none other than KPL Dream Team, from China’s own King Pro League, the top esports tournament for Honor of Kings in the country.

As a bonus for fans, both the Esports World Cup and Honor of Kings will be collaborating to launch an exclusive in-game skin available freely for fans. This new invitational follows a whopping $15m commitment made by Tencent to growing the game’s esports circuit.

A league of their own

So, never heard of Honor of Kings? Well, we don’t blame you. Despite being an absolute smash-hit in its home country of China, Honor of Kings has never been released outside of it. That is, until last year when Tencent made the surprise move to launch it in Brazil. Thanks to a dedicated player base in China, Honor of Kings is arguably the most popular MOBA in the world by raw player count, even compared to genre definers League of Legends and Dota.

After years of being in such a relatively closed-off space, it looks like Tencent really wants to push Honor of Kings as being ‘the next big thing’. And with high-profile MOBA games on mobile being in fairly short supply – League of Legends for example only having the spin-off Wild Rift available to smartphone players – Honor of Kings may be about to step into the limelight.

But is an invitational going to do that? Or will potential players and esports fans alike eschew the big, well-travelled teams when they can’t watch home-grown competitors? Only time will tell, and when the Esports World Cup rolls around this year, the 2024 edition could break new ground for the game.

And if you’re interested in learning more about Honor of Kings, why not check out our tier list of all the characters currently available? If-slash-when the game arrives worldwide you might want to get to know the top picks before you jump in.