KeSPA Cup

The KeSPA Cup (Korean: 케스파컵) is an esports event organized by the Korean eSports Association. As of the 2024 edition, the tournament is organized for League of Legends. Until 2016, the tournament was also organized for StarCraft II.

KeSPA Cup
2024 KeSPA Cup logo
Genre	Esports
Frequency	Annual
Location(s)	Asia
Country	South Korea
Inaugurated	2005
Most recent	2024
Website	http://e-sports.or.kr/kespacup/

History

The first KeSPA cup was hosted in 2005 as a tournament to allow professional StarCraft teams to play against amateur teams. Events were also held for Special Force, Kartrider, and FreeStyle Street Basketball. The second event was held in 2007 at Sejong University and also included WarCraft III and Counter-Strike.^[1]

In 2014, seven years since the last event, KeSPA Cup was brought back for its modern iteration and it has been held every year since. StarCraft II was the only game that had a tournament in the relaunch of the initiative and it featured 16 of the year's best players playing for 8 million South Korean won.^[2] The following year, two tournaments for StarCraft II were held, the first in May and the second in July. League of Legends was added as one of the events in 2015.^[3]

In 2016, Alex "Neeb" Sunderhaft became the first non-Korean StarCraft player to win a major Korean tournament in sixteen years after winning the 2016 KeSPA Cup. The previous non-Korean champion was Guillaume Patry, who won the first OnGameNet StarLeague in 2000.^[4]

Tournaments

StarCraft

The format for the original StarCraft KeSPA Cup was a team based event where professional teams under KeSPA played against amateur teams. There have been no more tournaments held for StarCraft since 2007.

Year	Name of Tournament	Winners
2005	The First KeSPA Cup	Samsung
2007	The Second KeSPA Cup	MBC Game Hero

StarCraft II

KeSPA Cup was relaunched with a StarCraft II tournament. All of the tournaments are all part of the StarCraft II World Championship Series and thus award WCS points to the participants. The format for the tournament is a sixteen player elimination tournament starting with group stages and entering a playoffs round in the round of 8.

Year	Name of Tournament	Winner	Score	Runner-up	Prize pool (KRW)
2014	2014 KeSPA Cup	Joo "Zest" Sung-wook	4–1	Kim "herO" Joon-ho	80,000,000
2015	GiGA Internet 2015 KeSPA Cup Season 1	Kim "herO" Joon-ho	4–3	Park "Dark" Ryung-woo	25,000,000
2015	LOTTE Homeshopping 2015 KeSPA Cup Season 2	Eo "soO" Yoon-su	4–1	Park "Dark" Ryung-woo	25,000,000
2016	2016 KeSPA Cup	Alex "Neeb" Sunderhaft	4–0	Cho "Trap" Sung-ho	55,000,000

League of Legends

League of Legends was added as a recurring event in 2015. Twelve teams competed in the 2024 edition, including all ten teams of the League of Legends Champions Korea and two invited teams, Chinese Taipei and Vietnam.^[5]

Year	Winners	Score	Runners-up	Prize pool (KRW)
2015	ESC Ever	3–0	CJ Entus	100,000,000
2016	ROX Tigers	3–1	Kongdoo Monster	100,000,000
2017	KT Rolster	3–2	Longzhu Gaming	100,000,000
2018	Griffin	3–0	Gen.G	102,000,000[6]
2019	Afreeca Freecs	3–0	Sandbox Gaming	158,000,000[7]
2020	Damwon Gaming	3–0	Nongshim RedForce	144,000,000[8]
2021	DWG KIA Challengers	3–1	Fredit BRION Challengers	30,000,000[9]
2022	Not held
2023
2024	OKSavingsBank Brion	3–1	Dplus KIA	80,000,000