The groups
are set
Trackmania’s debut at the Esports World Cup now has a bracket. Thirty-two players, two groups, eight four-player lobbies. And for the first time in years, the sport’s greatest ever champion isn’t the only name worth watching in the room.
Trackmania’s EWC 2026 group stage runs August 19–21 in Paris, with 32 players split across Group A and Group B. Each group is broken into four lobbies of four, and every lobby plays a double-elimination format. The top eight finishers from each group advance to a 16-player single-elimination playoff on August 22, which decides the champion and the largest share of the $500,000 prize pool.
Three roads, one bracket
The 32-player field was never going to be seeded randomly, and looking at the two reveal graphics closely, it wasn’t. Every one of the eight lobbies is built from the same recipe: one player from the DreamHack Birmingham LAN qualifier, one from the Elite Cup season-long ranking, and two from the regional Online Qualifiers. That’s the seeding logic in full: Birmingham’s top eight, the Elite Cup’s top eight, and sixteen Online Qualifier players spread two per lobby.
It’s a clean system, and it means every single lobby at EWC has a credible LAN top finisher, a proven points leader, and two players who fought through open qualifiers to get here. Nobody drew a soft group by accident. There isn’t one on the board.
Reference this against the match cards below. The pattern holds in all eight lobbies without exception.
Group A reveal
Group A doesn’t have Carl Jr. in it, and that’s about the only easy thing to say about it. Between Pac, Mudda, Epos, Binkss and Otaaaq, this is arguably the deepest single group of the tournament, four lobbies where the gap between the DreamHack Birmingham seed and the Online Qualifier names underneath them looks a lot smaller than the seeding chart suggests. Pac headlines A1, the first player ApexTM sat down with this season, drawn alongside Affi, Stufts and Noiszia. Mudda anchors A4 off the back of his DreamHack Birmingham run, sharing a lobby with Gwen, Pusztitopako and Baiwack.
Pac, Mudda and Epos are the favorites in A1
Pac told ApexTM in “The Long Game” that consistency, not raw pace, has carried his season, and A1 plays to exactly that. Affi is dangerous but has been streaky in recent Elite Cup rounds, and neither Stufts nor Noiszia arrives with Pac’s live-event experience. This is his match to win.
Zoom out to the full group and six of the eight Group A playoff spots look close to settled: Pac, Epos, Mudda, Binkss, Otaaaq and Gwen all carry enough behind them to expect a top-eight finish. The last two spots are the real fight, and that’s where it gets fun. Affi and LinkMax are the names ApexTM bets on to steal them, though nothing about this group is guaranteed having Wosile or Stufts as additional contenders.
Mudda draws the Hungarian wildcard
A4 is quieter on paper but not simple. Pusztitopako qualified out of the European Online Qualifier and has track knowledge that plays well on technical maps, the kind of profile that upsets a double-elimination lobby. Mudda’s Red Bull Faster 2026 win makes him the clear favorite regardless, but Gwen is an Elite Cup regular with more recent live-format reps than most of this group.
LinkMax came through last of the three qualification paths, headlining the Asia & Oceania Online Qualifier in June, after DreamHack Birmingham and the Elite Cup ranking had already locked in 16 names, alongside Spark, JSwag and Baiwack. He lands in A2 against Wosile and reigning Elite Cup champion Binkss, both of whom bring far more live-format experience into the lobby. Pusztitopako’s road ran through the stacked Europe qualifier that also produced Richie1308, Stufts, Neon and Whizzy, and he now sits in A4 opposite Mudda. Both are the same test in different lobbies: whether an Online Qualifier run holds up against players with real LAN and Elite Cup results behind them.
Group B reveal
Group B doesn’t have the depth Group A does, but it has the tournament’s headline story, and that starts in one specific lobby.
CarlJr’s lobby, not his easiest tournament
Seven world titles, the most recent Trackmania World Cup win still fresh from last November, and a Team Falcons signing built specifically around this event. CarlJr is still one of the favorites to top B1, and probably the field. What’s different this time is that it isn’t a foregone conclusion. Mime’s spot in this field came almost entirely from one result, a 500-point Hungary at the Elite Cup finale, rather than a season of consistent scoring, which tells you less about how he’ll perform across a double-elimination lobby than his ranking suggests. Richie and Flimsy both had to win an Online Qualifier to be here at all, which tends to filter for players peaking at the right time. Nobody expects Carl Jr. to miss the top eight out of B1. But Group A, lobby for lobby, still looks like the harder half of the bracket to escape.
Bren and Nayko share a lobby
Bren, the 2023 world champion, and Nayko, the Elite Cup’s standout young talent, land in the same four-player lobby, alongside Neon and JSwag, who both came through Online Qualifiers to reach Paris. It’s the one lobby in Group B with two genuinely proven names in it rather than one, which makes B4 worth watching regardless of what the rest of the group looks like.
eLconn21 qualified through DreamHack Birmingham without the name recognition of CarlJr, Bren, Pac or Mudda. He’s probably the safer bet in B2, but not by much. Massa and Whizzy both have real cases too, which makes it one of the harder lobbies in Group B to call. B3 is a different story: GranaDy is the outright favorite there.
Neon is the one to know in B4. He’s 16, he came through the same stacked Europe Online Qualifier as Richie1308, Stufts, Pusztitopako, Josh1248 and Whizzy, and he’s about to share a lobby with a world champion in Bren and one of the Elite Cup’s best in Nayko. Whatever happens in B4, Neon walking into that at 16 is a story on its own.
What to watch for
Paris is almost over and the shape of the tournament is already visible. Trackmania will be one of the deciding factors in EWC Championship. Group A is deep enough, top to bottom, that a top-eight finish will mean something regardless of who gets there. Pac, Mudda, Epos, Binkss and Otaaaq are all fighting through lobbies with real quality underneath them. Group B is where the individual storylines sit: CarlJr chasing a first EWC title without being the runaway favorite for once, Bren and Nayko sharing a lobby, and a 16-year-old about to find out what that’s like.
Sixteen players advance out of these eight lobbies. Sixteen don’t. Nobody drew an easy one.