KeSPA Cup

KeSPA Cup
KeSPA Cup logo in 2015.
Genre	Esports
Frequency	Annual
Venue	Nexon Arena
Location(s)	Asia
Country	South Korea
Inaugurated	2005
Most recent	2016
Website
http://e-sports.or.kr/kespacup/

The KeSPA Cup (Hangul: 케스파컵) is an annual eSports event organized by KeSPA, the Korean eSports Association. As of 2016, tournaments are organized for StarCraft II and League of Legends and are played live at the Nexon Arena in Seoul.

The first KeSPA cup was hosted in 2005 as a tournament to allow professional StarCraft teams to play against amateur teams. Events were also held for Special Force, Kartrider, and FreeStyle Street Basketball. The second event was held in 2007 at Sejong University and also included WarCraft 3 and Counter Strike.

In 2014, seven years since the last event, KeSPA Cup was brought back for its modern iteration and it has been held every year since. StarCraft II was the only game that had a tournament in the relaunch of the initiative and it featured 16 of the year's best players playing for 8 million South Korean won. The following year, two tournaments for StarCraft II were held, the first in May and the second in July. League of Legends was added as one of the events in 2015.

In 2016, Alex "Neeb" Sunderhaft became the first non-Korean StarCraft player to win a major Korean tournament in sixteen years after winning the 2016 KeSPA Cup. The previous non-Korean champion was Guillaume Patry, who won the first OnGameNet StarLeague in 2000.

The format for the original StarCraft KeSPA Cup was a team based event where professional teams under KeSPA played against amateur teams. There have been no more tournaments held for StarCraft since 2007.