Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel World Championship (WCS) 2025: A Brief Introduction on the Players, Decks, and Commentators
The World Championship 2025 (AKA WCS 2025), the biggest live event in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel and Yu-Gi-Oh! in general is soon upon us. The event will be held for three days, August 29 to 31, in Paris, France, with livestreams starting at 7:00 AM UTC.
However, if you’re only interested in the Master Duel Parts, they’ll be at 7:00 AM UTC for the first day and 7:45 AM UTC for the second day. Only the TCG format will continue on to the third day.
Due to the approaching event, Master Duel released the WCS 2025 Celebratory Bundle for 2,000 Gems. It’ll only be available for 40 more days, so get it while you still can. The bundle includes the following:
- Royal Finish Alternate Art UR “Breaker the Magical Warrior” card
- New exclusive wallpaper, card protector, and icon themed around Exodia: the Forbidden One
- New Coin skin: The Millennium Puzzle
- 20 "Fires of Infinity" Secret Packs + 1 Guaranteed UR
Learn more about the live event below.
Who Will Be Competing In The Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel WCS 2025?
Here are all the teams participating in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel WCS 2025:
- Area A: Japan - Alignments
- Area B: Asia - FCG
- Area C: North America - Chaiba Corp
- Area D: Latin America - Fala Galera
- Area E1: Europe + Others - Brotdose
- Area E2 Europe + Others - snipehunters
- DuelistCup (September) - Dream’s Future
- DuelistCup (December) - Noble Gabigol
- DuelistCup (March) - Ragnarok
- SeasonPoint 1 - Soul Form
- SeasonPoint 2 - MUGITY
- WCS 2024 Title Holder - Team7
If you want to learn more about them and their members, you can actually see interviews with them in Master Duel. Tap on the Cheer for your Champion! campaign as it passes through the event screen in the lobby to view them. Might as well pick one to cheer for too, because you’ll get a reward depending on how high that team places in the tournament.
Decks To Expect In Master Duel’s WCS 2025
Though the exact decks each duelist will be using are still unknown, taking a look at the decks used in the Qualifiers can give us a good hint. Here are the recorded decks some of the contenders used:
- たすく (Tasuku) from Dream’s Future - Crystron
- キノココ (Kinokoko AKA Endeavor AKA Endea) from Alignments - Snake-Eyes w/ Fiendsmith
- Rjay from FCG - Snake-Eyes w/ Fiendsmith
- Joey Chou from Chaiba Corp - Blue-Eyes White Dragon
- JUD£UYGO from Fala Galera - Mermail Atlantean
- Bronas69 from Brotdose - Snake-Eyes w/ Fiendsmith
- Quantal from snipehunters - Mermail
Again, these aren’t set in stone. The contenders can use any deck that’s compliant with Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel’s banlist as of August 10. Also, each player can have up to two decks and switch between them freely for each duel.
The last caveat is that each team can only have a maximum of three copies of any card across all of their decks. So, if one deck in the team already has three copies of Ash Blossom, none of their other decks can have it. Alternatively, they can choose to spread it out however they want; like maybe having three decks with one copy of Ash Blossom each. The restrictions of Limited and Semi-Limited cards still apply here. So only one copy of a Limited card like Crossout Designator can exist in all of a team’s decks.
The Human and AI Announcers for Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel WCS 2025
One other hot topic of discussion is the announcers for the Master Duel WCS 2025. There will still be human commentators, represented by Ibriz Daya, Sebastian Lemke, and Leonard König. However, for the first time, the WCS will feature AI announcers for a separate livestream.
Understandably, reception for the AI announcers isn’t too hot. It’s said that the decision was made so that people who don’t speak English can also appreciate the tournament, since the AI will be available in multiple languages. But is it better than simply hiring people from those languages to commentate? Only time will tell how it’ll go.
The AI commentators will only be for the Master Duel parts of the WCS. The TCG, Speed Duel, and Rush Duel formats will exclusively have human commentators.
