IEM Beijing 2026 to be biggest standalone IEM event in Asia

IEM is set to return to China this year in November in Beijing, filling the Bloomage Biotech·Biohyalux ECM Arena.

Fans are welcome to join for all six tournament days, with a '360-degree stage design', according to the Director of CS Esports, Marc Winther. This means the players will be caught in the middle of, at least IEM are hoping, a raucous Chinese crowd.

China tends be a fun place for Counter-Strike as it's something of an untapped market; they seem to love all esports, but have never been truly captured by CS, probably in part due to its unusual installation over there. Yet when IEM has been in the country, the crowd has been nothing but loud, wild and a load of fun.

IEM are calling it the 'biggest standalone event in Asia to date' as they are expecting a mind-boggling 45,000 fans - though given the arena holds something like 18,000 people, we suspect this might be suggesting there will be a lot of daytrippers.

It has been so long since we saw IEM in Beijing - seven years - that Astralis (yes that one) won the event last time out.

We doubt we'll see such happenings this time around - though perhaps Vitality winning it would echo that feeling.