Rangchu reigns supreme as the first Tekken 8 World Champion

This past weekend saw the Excellent Tekken Festival take place in Tokyo, Japan where the 2024 Tekken World Tour came to its conclusion. This sixth entry in the Namco Bandai sponsored tournament series saw the debut of Tekken 8, whereas all previous tours utilized Tekken 7. 37 players from over 13+ countries vied to be crowned the Tekken World Tour Champion and it the end it was a former tour champion that took the grand prize.

Jeong “Rangchu” Hyeon-ho, had won the Tekken World Tour in 2018 with a combination of Panda, Kuma, Geese Howard and Feng, only utilized Kuma for his second Tekken World Tour victory. This is considered quite the shock as the bears in Tekken, despite their intimidating look, often rank low in the tier list according to the experts of the community. Rangchu outlasted Atif “Atif” Ijaz to take home the $100k prize.

After the first Tekken 8 World Champion was crowned, Namco Bandai would reveal details for the game’s Winter Update as well as its Second Season. This winter will see a revamped photo mode, improved player search features, expansion of the game’s customization tools and of course the final character in the game’s first season whose reveal will take place at The Game Awards this Thursday. Spring will see the game’s second season which will see balance adjustments, new moves for every character as well as the next Tekken World Tour!

Looks like this closes out the game’s first year and I’m thinking the game will be going for quite a while and we’ll have many more Tekken World Tour Champions crowned.

Tekken 8 is available now on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.

TEKKEN 8 – Winter Update & Season 2 Announcement Trailer