NEW DELHI — KRAFTON India has announced the launch of the College Campus Tour for the 2026–2027 season. The large-scale initiative is already underway and aims to bring student esports tournaments to colleges across India.
Six months, four regions, starting from IIT Kharagpur and IIT Varanasi
The tour will run from October 2026 through March 2027, covering 256 colleges distributed evenly across four regions of the country: North, South, East, and West, with 64 institutions participating in each region.
The first venues were two prestigious technical institutions: IIT Kharagpur and IIT Varanasi. The tour set off from there on October 10, and over the coming months, competitions will gradually unfold on campuses from Delhi to Chennai.
BGMI and Real Cricket as the competitive titles of the new season
The tour program features tournaments in two mobile titles: BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA (BGMI) and Real Cricket. Participation opens up several opportunities for students:
- Competing on a recognised platform with professional organisation;
- Representing their institution in inter-college matchups;
- Gaining structured experience in esports competition that was previously accessible only at select venues in major cities.
The previous season set a high benchmark
The expansion of the tour is no coincidence. In the previous season, the College Campus Tour reached 128 institutions and engaged more than 75,000 students. These figures demonstrated that interest in competitive gaming among Indian youth significantly exceeded initial expectations. The organisers responded by doubling the number of participating campuses.
Gaming as part of everyday life
Such programs have become a natural consequence of PC and mobile gaming becoming part of everyday life in India. Schoolchildren, college students, office workers, and older adults all play. Newcomers rarely start by purchasing expensive titles. More often, they try free-to-play games and promotional giveaways to find out whether they enjoy playing and which genres appeal to them.
This trend is also observed by services that track in-game bonus offers. The team behind https://nodepositbonusesnz.com reports a noticeable increase in interest from visitors based in India. Many of them remain casual players who game in their spare time, but some gradually become drawn into competitive titles and seek opportunities to test themselves against others.
For such players, the student tour serves as the first stage in esports: they can compete right on their own campus, without travelling to other cities.
Competitions woven into the life of college festivals
A key feature of the format is that tournaments will take place as part of annual college festivals. This approach removes organisational barriers and makes participation a natural element of student life, rather than a separate event requiring travel to another city.
On the ground, execution will be handled by the festival committees of the colleges themselves, who will receive logistical support from partners. The tournaments are held in collaboration with Nodwin Gaming and Upthrust Esports, with the prize pool fully provided by KRAFTON India.
Karan Pathak on the tour’s plans and ambitions
Karan Pathak, Associate Director — Esports at KRAFTON India, commented on the program’s expansion and the prospects it offers students.
“Last year we saw just how strong the interest in competitive gaming is among college students. This year we are going further, reaching 256 colleges across the country. We want to give more students the chance to experience competitive gaming right on their own campuses, compete against other colleges, and for the strongest teams, advance to the next level. With BGMI and Real Cricket, we look forward to another exciting season on India’s campuses.”
Four stages from campus to the professional scene
The tour offers a clear competitive pathway with escalating difficulty:
1. Campus Qualifiers — selection within the college and identification of the best rosters to represent the campus.
2. Zonal Rounds — meetings of campus champions within each region (North, South, East, and West).
3. Grand Finals — the concluding stage of the zonal cycles, where the strongest regional teams are determined.
4. College Campus Championship — a national tournament for 16 teams; the winner receives a direct invitation to the invited stage of KRAFTON India’s official tournaments in 2027.
A bridge between amateur gaming and professional esports
The tour is positioned as a grassroots pathway capable of systematically connecting the amateur student level with India’s professional scene. For promising teams, it represents a clear growth trajectory: from inter-college matches to a national final with access to official tournaments. In a country where mobile gaming is experiencing rapid growth, such a talent pipeline could significantly accelerate the development of a new generation of competitive rosters.
