2026 Virtual Sports Carnival and HADO World Cup Launched, Shanghai Builds "AI + Virtual Sports" Event Brand
The 2026 Bright Meat Virtual Sports Carnival and HADO World Cup was launched on October 31. The event will be held from November 20 to 22 at the North Bund in Hongkou, Shanghai. The number of events has expanded from two to four, with the addition of the U16 International Campus Championship and the Global Solo King Tournament. The number of participating countries and regions has increased from 18 to 24, with approximately 600 athletes. Shanghai will use the event as the core to cultivate its own virtual sports brand, promote virtual sports in schools, commercial districts and communities, and build a world-class event IP of "Artificial Intelligence + Virtual Sports". Hongkou District has released Shanghai's first three-year action plan for virtual sports and has identified 21 virtual sports venues.
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On October 31, the 2026 Bright Meat Virtual Sports Carnival and the HADO World Championship Cup were launched. The tournament will be held from November 20 to 22 in the riverside area of the Shanghai Hongkou North Bund International Passenger Transport Center. This year's event has expanded from last year's two major competitions to four, adding the U16 International School Championship and the Global Singles King Tournament; the number of participating countries and regions has increased from 18 to 24, and the number of athletes has increased from about 300 to about 600. This year's event integrates international competitions, virtual sports experiences, brand interactions and urban culture, and is linked with the "2026 Shanghai Global Food Carnival · Pancake World," gathering about 40 kinds of specialty pancakes and flavored foods to create a North Bund signature carnival IP that combines watching competitions, sports, food and leisure consumption. It is expected that about 1,000 participating athletes and accompanying team members will generate demand for hotel accommodation, dining, shopping and city sightseeing. The event will link the North Bund and surrounding commercial districts to promote the integrated development of culture, commerce, tourism, sports and exhibitions, turning the event's popularity into urban consumer vitality; at the same time, through urban culture and food experiences, international participants can experience Chinese culture and the charm of Shanghai, and are encouraged to share their experiences in Shanghai, using sports as a bridge to tell China's story well and spread Shanghai's excitement. According to introductions, Shanghai will use the event as the core to cultivate its own virtual sports brand, benchmark against traditional sports events with a broad mass base, promote virtual sports into schools, commercial districts and communities, improve age-graded and level-graded courses, coach training, skill evaluation and exercise effect assessment systems, expand audience coverage, and build a world-class "Artificial Intelligence + Virtual Sports" event brand IP that belongs to Shanghai and has global influence. Hongkou District has taken the lead in laying out virtual sports development. In the first quarter of 2026, Hongkou District researched and formulated the "Hongkou District Three-Year Action Plan for Virtual Sports Development (2026-2028)," becoming the first administrative district in Shanghai to issue an action plan related to virtual sports, clearly defining five key tasks: building a virtual sports event system, creating virtual sports activity scenarios, enhancing the concentration of the virtual sports industry, innovating "virtual sports+" development, and cultivating youth participation in virtual sports. In the first half of 2026, Hongkou District released the "2026 Hongkou Virtual Sports Consumption Map," identifying 21 virtual sports venues, covering nine business formats including virtual tennis, virtual golf, virtual skiing, virtual fitness, virtual rowing, virtual shooting, virtual taekwondo, virtual remote-control racing and comprehensive virtual sports venues. Relying on the Hongkou District Sports Industry Alliance platform, a number of virtual technology sports events have been carried out in commercial districts and office buildings, including the Virtual Flight Competition White-Collar Tournament, the AGI Robot Dog Parkour Challenge, the iFlytek Alpha Egg Go Robot Fun Tournament, the Parent-Child Technology Orienteering Competition, the Low-Altitude Drone Challenge and the Virtual Light Wave Ball Challenge. The HADO World Championship Cup has become an international calling card for Hongkou's virtual sports. In May 2025, the 2025 HADO World Championship Cup and Wave Virtual Sports Carnival were held at the North Bund International Passenger Transport Center, gathering HADO elite teams from 18 countries and regions around the world. As a key linked project of the Shanghai Sports Consumption Festival's "Sports, Culture, Commerce, Tourism and Exhibition" and a Hongkou series activity of the 2025 "May 5 Shopping Festival," it brought international attention to Hongkou's North Bund. Hongkou District has also actively promoted HADO pop-up activities in shopping malls. The HADO program has opened courses in 10 schools in Hongkou District and has been included in the 2026 Hongkou District Student Sunshine Sports League, with the "Hongkou Experimental School Cup" HADO competition established, in which 31 representative teams from 13 primary and secondary schools across the district participated.