Three brackets, three champions: the FIGN Tournament returns to Port Harcourt

Renaissance Innovation Labs · Port Harcourt · 24 July 2026

Three brackets, one floor

On Friday, July 24, the FIGN Tournament came back to Port Harcourt. Renaissance Innovation Labs opened at 8:00 AM, and three brackets ran on the same floor for the rest of the day: EA Sports FC 26, Mortal Kombat 1, and Traka. One ₦200,000 prize pool stretched across all three.

Three genuinely different games. A football sim that rewards patience and reading your opponent two moves before they commit. A fighting game where a single mistimed block ends a round. And Traka, a next-generation competitive title built with African players in mind.

Almost nothing transfers between them. That was the point. The day offered three separate ways to be the best player in the room — and by close of play, it had three separate answers.

01EA Sports FC 26

Second went to JJ, who came in from Lagos for the day. That detail matters more than it looks: a player travelling several hundred kilometres to enter a community bracket is the clearest signal that this event has outgrown the city hosting it.

Third would not resolve into one name. Chidex and Preye finished level, and share the placement.

02Mortal Kombat 1

Goodness finished second. And for the second time on the day, third place ended in a tie — Angel and Emerald share it.

Two of three brackets producing a joint third is worth sitting with. That is what a deep field looks like. When the bottom of the podium is crowded, the distance between the players contesting it is thinner than a single set can measure. It means the room was full of people who could genuinely have gone further, not a handful of favourites and everyone else.

03Traka

Sleepyhead took second and FaeX third — the one clean, unambiguous 1-2-3 of the day.

Final standings

₦200,000 was awarded across the three titles.

What a podium is actually for

It is easy to read a results table as a list of nine names and move on. We would rather you read it as nine pieces of evidence.

Every one of these players is now someone another woman in Port Harcourt can point at. Not a distant professional on a stream in another timezone — someone who was in a room on Ada George Road on a Friday morning, in the same city, playing the same games, on the same hardware. That proximity is the whole argument.

The gap between watching competitive gaming and entering it is rarely talent. It is the absence of anyone visible who looks like you doing it first.

Three brackets just produced nine of them.

And a tournament is not only its podium. Everyone who registered, queued, lost a set early and stayed to watch the rest is part of why the brackets were worth winning at all. A bracket with nobody in it crowns nobody.

Thank you

A day this size does not run on one sponsor. To Kon10dr for the tournament infrastructure, to WITI for backing women in tech across Nigeria, to Renaissance Innovation Labs for the venue, and to Esports Africa News for the coverage — thank you.

And to every other partner, sponsor and community who put their name on this one: 43Gamezone, Daimyo Arena, GameEvo Esports, GameEvo Tech, Garden City Esports Community, Hairluxe.NG, Nerdwork, Nexal Gaming, Phygital Nigeria, Raven, REMZ Aesthetics, Run It Up Port Harcourt, Spavecraft, and Streamlivr — thank you. Eighteen names on one banner is what makes a ₦200,000 prize pool and a free-to-enter bracket possible.

And to everyone who showed up at 8:00 AM on a Friday to play: this is what the network is for.

The next one will be bigger. If you want to be in that bracket, join us at contact@fign.org or find us on our events page.