MLBB Ladies’s Invitational can be making a return to the 2026 Esports World Cup from July thirteenth to seventeenth.
The match will characteristic a $500,000 prize pool and among the finest ladies’s Cellular Legends: Bang Bang groups battle for the trophy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Defending champions Workforce Vitality have robotically certified for the 2026 version, with the remainder of the slots allotted as follows:
Athena Cup: 1
Queen Legends: 1
Girl MVP: 1
MWI 2026 Indonesia Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 MY/SG Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 China Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 South America Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 Myanmar Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 Mekong Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 Türkiye Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 MENA Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 Mongolia Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 North America Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 Western Europe Qualifier: 1
MWI 2026 Africa Qualifier: 1
All 16 groups will start their journey within the Group Stage after being divided into two equal teams.
They are going to compete in double elimination brackets in best-of-three sequence, with the highest 4 groups from every group advancing to the only elimination Playoffs.
The Semi Finals and Grand Ultimate can be performed as best-of-five and best-of-seven matches, respectively, to resolve the champions.
Ladies’s Empowerment or a PR Technique
Saudi Arabia has spent billions of {dollars} to enhance its international picture, regardless of a well-documented historical past of human rights violations, which is an ideal instance of sportswashing.
Furthermore, ladies within the nation nonetheless lack many basic rights and proceed to face the male guardianship system.
The identical Saudi Arabian authorities rolling out the purple carpet for feminine MLBB professionals is ironic at finest, and places the “ladies empowerment” narrative beneath scrutiny.
As well as, whereas the $500,000 prize pool is kind of giant compared to different ladies’s esports tournaments, it’s nonetheless six occasions smaller than the boys’s EWC Mid Season Cup, which provides $3 million.
The Saudi Arabian esports organisation, Workforce Falcons, additionally fields a ladies’s roster to take part for the match, which additional permits the federal government to put on a masks of feminine equality.
That is much like esports manufacturers slapping rainbow filters on their logos in the course of the Pleasure Month, solely to point out no significant assist for the remainder of the yr.
That stated, in comparison with a number of different esports ecosystems, MLBB does supply a comparatively extra sustainable circuit, with the 2025 EWC Ladies’s Invitational reaching nearly 500k peak viewers.
Lastly, relatively than turning ladies’s esports into mere marking stunts, precise work needs to be accomplished to handle the toxicity and harassment the gender faces every day throughout the ecosystem.
