DreamHack Stockholm 2025: Turning gaming and esports culture into a modern festival experience

ABOUT THIS ENTRY

DreamHack Stockholm 2025 turned gaming and esports culture into a modern festival experience. Bringing together over 60,000 attendees (an increase of 15% from 2024), the festival combined; two major esports finals for Brawl Stars and the Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS) offering over $1.6m in prize pools, hundreds of creators for fans to meet IRL, an expo packed with new indie games through to AAA titles for the community to get hands-on with, and more. The event brought together multiple gaming communities with significant onsite and digital engagement with 4M+ video views, 4.9M social impressions, and a 103M potential media audience, proving that a youth-first festival centered around gaming can rival that of traditional live entertainment. 

How does this represent "Excellence in Engagement"?

DreamHack events offer a new festival model, built to accommodate younger audiences who are increasingly prioritising purpose-led social experiences. And DreamHack Stockholm 2025 set a blueprint for how sports-entertainment organisations such as ESL FACEIT Group can build future-proof, community-led live experiences around the next generation’s fandoms.

Our event set a new benchmark for “Best Gaming or Esports Experience” by treating engagement as participation, belonging, and cultural relevance, not just viewership. Under one roof we coordinated multiple finals, creators, expo, indies, and live shows to form a carefully curated agenda which ensured fans weren’t passive spectators; they moved between communities and activities all weekend. 

Objective

DreamHack Stockholm 2025, created by ESL FACEIT Group, set out to prove that gaming culture is no longer a niche subculture, and that a modern festival can deliver the same scale, emotion, and energy as traditional live entertainment, while meeting younger audiences where they are.

Our goals were:

• 60,000 attendance
• A Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 35+
• Being profitable on a project-level

Creatively, the objective was to design an experience that felt bigger than a LAN or an esports event: a festival-format celebration spanning esports, creators, live shows, expo, and community play. 

Finally, DreamHack visits multiple locations each year. In 2025 we visited Shanghai, Dallas, Atlanta, Hyderabad, before ending in Stockholm. For each destination we look to engage with gamers on a local and regional scale. For DreamHack Stockholm our focus was to engage with Swedish players and expand our reach to gamers across Northern Europe.    

Strategy & Execution

DreamHack Stockholm 2025 was designed to celebrate all facets of gaming fandom, bringing internet and esports “household names” together with their communities in a festival-format weekend. We created “reasons to come,” so different audiences could find their entry point and stay engaged all day:

• Major esports competitions: From competitive mobile-gaming with Brawl Stars,and  the high-energy precision of FPS with the Overwatch Champions Series, to the first major international tournament for THE FINALS, we offered over $1.6m in prize pools, and brought elite competitive gaming to the wider community. 
  
   
• Local & regional creator-first programming: We invited 437 creators and built live-interaction formats, including the premiere of Chat vs Champs with Beta Squad (a British creator collective), a game show involving live challenges, and a "Wheel of Punishments”. And we programmed the first-ever live podcast with IJustWantToBeCool, one of Sweden’s most-loved comedy influencer groups, driving shareable moments and community participation.
  
   
• A “big tent” expo: We secured over 100 exhibitors, including major gaming brands, Riot Games, Xbox, Nintendo, LEGO and more, offering hands-on play, discovery, and variety beyond esports. Our engaged community and premium events were seen as a premium platform for brand partners, securing major names including Lamborghini and Volvo.

Organizations

• ESL FACEIT Group

Links

•   Website

Featured

• We had a series of major esports athletes and teams competing across multiple titles:

  An Historic Overwatch Champions Series Title for EMEA

  Teams competing included: Team Falcons and Crazy Raccoon- both part of the historic Korean domination in Overwatch Esports

• Al Qadsiah and Twisted Minds were the finalists
• where the latter triumphed 3–1 to become the OWCS 2025 World Champions.

  NTMR Gaming Claims the Grand Major 2025 Championship Title for THE FINALS

  Teams competing included: NTMR Gaming captured the Grand Major 2025 title

• becoming the first team to reach 5 match points in THE FINALS’ signature Heat System. They beat fan favorites ENVY and rising stars TSM before securing victory over challengers Team Secret
• FNATIC
• and SSG. 

  Crazy Arena

• Crazy Crowd
• and Crazy Raccoon Lit Up The Brawl Stars World Finals in Stockholm

  The Brawl Stars World Finals brought massive energy to Stockholm as 16 international teams competed for a $1

• 000
• 000 prize pool. Fans packed the venue throughout the weekend to witness pro-level competition and a ceremony performance of The Good Randoms.

  The Grand Finals match ended with Crazy Raccoon taking down HMBLE in a 3-0 sweep. 

  BIG EQUIPA and Emmsan Get To Lift ESL Impact Trophy on Home Soil 

  ESL Impact League Season 8 Finals featured two Grand Final debut teams as MIBR fe and BIG EQUIPA battled it out

• with BIG EQUIPA claiming the title and $50
• 000.

  Teams competing included: Sakura

• BIG EQUIPA
• and NIP Impact. 

  Monte to EPL as DreamHack Knockout Brings Back Old-School Counter-Strike

  38 teams came to Stockholm to compete for glory and one ticket to the world’s biggest Counter-Strike 2 league

• the ESL Pro League. 

  Teams competing included: Monte

• FUT
• 500
• GenOne
• and OG.

Credits

Kalle Pilfalk
Director of Festivals
EFG

Petter Sten
Head of Operations
EFG

Shahin Zarrabi
VP, Festivals
EFG

Anna Nordlander
VP, Product, Executive Producer
EFG

Andreas Jernberg
VP, Comercial
EFG

Guillermo Parga
Senior Director Publisher Operations
EFG

Emily Chow
Director of Project Management
EFG

Simon Marin
Director of Festival Operations
EFG

Tom Morelli
Director of Marketing
EFG

Ylva von Zweigbergk
Senior Product Manager
EFG

Lasse Kjær
Senior Product Manager
EFG

Timothy Jalgard
Product Manager, Digital
EFG

Christal Beauclaire
Stage Manager
EFG

Ylva Berggren
Consulting Product Manager
EFG

Bill Conte
Senior Event Manager
EFG

Sandra Johnsson
Festival Project Manager
EFG

Carolina Aspelin
Festival Lead EU
EFG

Hampus Kjellmor
Project Manager
EFG

Brita Sandeback
Project Manager
EFG

Martin Sirc
Brand Partnership Manager
EFG

John Karlsson
Brand Partnership Manager
EFG

Sarah Melissa Fox
Partner Manager
EFG

Jascha Braeker
Senior Partnerships Development Manager
EFG