A Strong Finish for the 2025 Season
The Honor of Kings International Championship 2025 has wrapped up with an impressive new milestone, recording more than 650,000 peak viewers and setting the highest viewership for any Honor of Kings esports event held outside China this year. According to Esports Charts, the Grand Final alone reached a high of 694,424 viewers, giving the global scene a strong and confident close to the 2025 season.
The tournament brought together the world’s top Honor of Kings teams for a packed 110 hours of airtime, delivering a total watch time of 3.2 million hours across the event.
Nova Esports vs HomeBois BSE Takes the Spotlight
The Grand Final clash between Nova Esports and HomeBois BSE stood out as the most watched match of the competition. While the main event broke records, the remaining most viewed matches struggled to cross the 100,000 mark, showing a noticeable drop in consistency across the broader tournament.
Image Credit: Esports Charts
Despite its peak success, this year’s Championship averaged 29,113 viewers, falling short of the 36,509 average recorded in 2024. The dip represents a 20 percent decline year on year, though the standout moments still kept the international community engaged.
English Broadcast Continues to Grow
Honor of Kings has been working hard to expand its Western audience through more accessible broadcasts and international storylines. That effort continued to pay off, with the English stream pulling in more than 210,000 peak viewers on its own.
This growing interest helped push the Championship past the previous international record, set earlier this year by the Honor of Kings World Cup 2025, which reached 653,309 peak viewers.
A Record Breaking Year for Honor of Kings Esports
The Championship marks another major achievement in what has been one of the scene’s biggest years to date. In November, the KPL Grand Finals in Beijing set a Guinness World Record for the largest live attendance at an esports match, drawing a massive crowd of 62,196 fans inside the Bird’s Nest stadium. Spectators watched as All Gamers secured a hard fought victory over Wolves Esports to become the region’s champions.
Momentum continued building into October, when Tencent unveiled its full Honor of Kings esports roadmap for 2026. The plan includes six cross regional events, two sets of regional leagues, and standalone competitions in key regions such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil. With more structure and more international exposure ahead, the game’s competitive future looks bigger than ever.
Looking Ahead to 2026
With record breaking viewership, global expansion and new competitive pathways on the way, Honor of Kings is setting itself up for an even stronger international year in 2026. If the momentum from this Championship is any indication, the game’s global esports footprint is only just getting started.