Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero announces first world championship

Entertainment holding company Bandai Namco has announced the first world championship for its fighting game Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero.

The Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero World Tournament will consist of online and on-site qualifiers with the finals taking place at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour in Los Angeles next year. 

Sparking Zero is the latest in a series of Dragon Ball fighting games with the title only released in October 2024. Despite its short life span the game’s publisher, Bandai Namco, seemingly has esports aspirations for the game given the world tournament announcement.

The online national tournaments will take place between November and December 2024, crowning the top players across nine different regions. The regions competing for qualification are the United States (East and West), Mexico, Japan, France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. The platform for qualification is Playstation 5. 

Following the qualifiers these nine players will be joined by seven more competitors through an on-site qualifier at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour. This is set to take place on January 18th, the day before the grand finals on January 19th.

Unlike other esports fighting events, Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero World Tournament will adopt a unique format in which each player/nation is represented by one of the game’s characters. This means 16 unique characters will be seen in the Grand Finals, with players also getting a choice of 40 characters for their second fighter.

In the announcement video, Jun Furutani, the Producer of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, noted that the characters will be balanced using different items in the game to ensure fair match-ups. Each competitor’s represented character was also revealed. 

The announcement has not provided any information regarding prize pools for the event.The hit anime and manga is no stranger to the esports scene with Dragon Ball FighterZ a prominent game within the fighting game community (commonly referred to as the FGC). Despite being released in 2018, Dragon Ball FighterZ was recently announced among other notable games for EVO France 2025, a major fighting game esports event.