East to West: "Western" Debuts I'd Like to See in 2026 and Beyond

Overseas players stepping foot in a new region to go play fighting games for the first time is something that ought to be celebrated more than it is. The stories of these players making their maiden voyages to the Americas, Europe, etc. serve to hammer the point home that fighting games are a global genre. The concept of majors as the Hyperbolic Time Chamber for fighting gamers is accentuated by the ability to play offline games with people you would've never had the chance to otherwise.

The history of fighting game regional rivalries can be (albiet pretty heavily) reduced down to various "East vs West" rivalries. As fighting games became increasingly globalized, this culminated in manifesting itself as the "Eastern world" (in a fighting game context, while eventually expanding to multiple regions within Asia,[1] generally centers around the East Asian countries of Japan, Korea, and China) vs the "Western world" (generally used to describe Europe and the Americas as a whole).

Concerted efforts to get the best of the best to come from the east to the west have been around for as long as the perception that the east is better at fighting games on aggregate than the west has. These international heavyweight battles serve to make some of the craziest brackets of all time even crazier,[2] and the hostting scene is motivated further by wanting to "defend home court".

As an unabashed arcade VOD muncher,[3] I developed wishlists of what players from those arcades would be cool to have attend western majors for the first time. Some games, like the original competitive primes of Xrd and BBCF, along with the UNIST boom, resulted in these wishlists being rapidly completed for them as part of gold rushes. Other games I have wishlists for have had their initial time in the spotlight be further from the present, so crossing names off these lists has been a lengthier process. Let's unveil who's left on these lists for these games, with all systemic barriers preventing or dissuading them from competing on our shores taken away.

Earlier in this piece, I cited BBCF was an example of a game where the floodgates had already opened for international talent in the past, and phrased said statement in a way that some may elect to interpret it as meaning that I think this "original competitive prime" of the game is the highest level of play the game has ever achieved. The truth is, there are a lot of individual players all over the world peaking right here, right now in the post-rollback era. Conveniently for our purposes, a lot of these people had not come over during that initial gold rush.

The CF community prides itself on character variety despite the game itself having haves and have-nots. With this in mind, its only fitting that everyone whose attendance I'd like to speak into existence are on different characters:

• Hikomaru (Kagura)
• Hiro (Naoto)
• Rascal (Bullet)
• Kappami (Valkenhayn)
• Gokukeshi (Amane)
• Bokuzen (Izanami)

3rd Strike has had perhaps the longest international travel history of every game mentioned in this post, with the annual 3rd Strike Open in NA and Third Street Battle in EU doing their part to send over clean championship favorites and fan favorite low tier heroes alike.

In terms of the GOAT contenders that have been seen in the Co-Op Cup winner's circle more than once, Deshiken sticks out as the only one we haven't seen in the West yet. Higa also strikes out as being synonymous with their character and a treat to see in action.

The rest of this wishlist concerns players of characters that have somehow been looked over completely in having them appear on their stages:

1. Akuma (Match is my clear favorite here, though I enjoy watching Uraken, Zabi, and Decoy play as well)
2. Oro (Thanatos and Munakata are the ones I've been aware of the longest)
3. Elena (Orona or Ikego, take your pick)