2025 World Championship Recap

…And that’s a wrap on Worlds 2025! Some of you are likely still making your way home from the largest Netrunner event of the Null Signal Games era, while many of you are likely reading this as your lives slowly return toward the more mundane. The 2025 World Championship in Edinburgh had over 390 tickets sold, 361 players in the main event, over 30 volunteers, and dozens of visitors. This event included people from at least 29 different countries, players for whom this was their first event, and people who have been playing since the 90s. Worlds is always a special and amazing time, and I’m so grateful to get to share it with so many passionate and wonderful people.

This World Championship was a resounding success on many levels, and it was great to see a field full of unique archetypes and strategies, with 43 unique identities being represented! The top-16 had 13 unique identities, and a variety of different strategies on both sides. The event was won by ZomZraft on an asset-based Epiphany Analytica: Nations Undivided Corp, and a Hoshiko Shiro: Untold Protagonist runner utilising Audrey v2. Both of these were decks that had fallen somewhat off the radar of competitive players during the intense discussions and practice sessions in the run-up to Worlds, so congratulations to ZomZraft and others who found these potent strategies! ZomZraft’s piloting skill gave him a commanding win in the finals against Davz’s AU Co. deck. AU Co. was the second most popular Corp identity and one of the best performing ones in the tournament, despite the recent ban of one of its defining agendas, Sting! 

With an event this large, there were many great stories and successes that cannot all be wrapped up in the one article. We hope to be sharing links to individual stories throughout the coming weeks as people put them together. We’re also looking forward to some journalistic coverage, as well as a documentary featuring this event some time in the next few months, so keep an eye out for them!

I want to wrap this up by thanking all the volunteers—every one of them was professional, dedicated, and incredibly helpful throughout the whole weekend. I also want to thank a bunch of NSG staff behind the scenes who were not able to attend, but were instrumental in this event running smoothly. And I want to thank everyone who attended, watched the stream, and is otherwise engaged with Netrunner. Worlds is always such an amazing event because of the community. We could not do this without all of you, your passion, and your support. Thank you, and I hope to see as many as you as possible online and at next year’s World Championship.

We are always looking to improve for next year, so if you have a few minutes to fill out our Worlds survey, we’d really appreciate it.