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World Escape Room Championship Online Qualifiers Set for June 28, 2025

Online qualifiers for the World Escape Room Championship are happening on June 28!

Richard Burns

18 June 2025

1–2 minutes

Richard Burns

Online qualifiers for the World Escape Room Championship are happening on June 28, 2025. Teams from around the world will meet online for a one-day global qualifier. The top 10 teams will be invited to Sofia, Bulgaria on October 19–20, 2025 to compete in a live final, held in custom-built escape rooms at The Purgatory venue.

ER Champ is a free international escape room championship. To participate you must have a team of a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 4 people. Each player will need a computer with internet access. Anyone can take part in the competition.

The top three Escape Room Championship teams, each in matching team jerseys pose for a photo with their victory medals in front of the team standings scoreboard. — Top three teams from ER Champ 2024 in Prague

A Growing Event

ER Champ has grown from its roots in Poland in 2017 into a truly international phenomenon, attracting players from every continent. Its rise has demonstrated that for a certain type of player, escape rooms are evolving from a casual hobby into a competitive discipline. With a structured, international format that mirrors other modern e-sports, complete with rankings, strategy, time pressure, and global audiences, teams now train, analyze past games, and develop internal roles, all to gain a competitive edge.

“ER Champ is more than a competition. It is a global celebration of escape rooms,” says Bartosz Idzikowski from Lock.me, the event organizer. “Every year, thousands of players from all over the world unite online to compete in the qualifiers, and the best of them travel across the globe to test their skills in unique, specially designed escape rooms. It’s a chance to become a very unusual kind of athlete – where sharp thinking and great collaboration matter more than physical strength.”

Three players in matching jerseys working on an escape room puzzle while being filmed and observed during the 2024 Escape Room Championship — Teams play while being filmed and observed

Details for 2025

Online Qualifiers: June 28, 2025
In-person Finals in Sofia, Bulgaria: October 19–20, 2025
This year’s story-driven competition is titled “Boo-tiful Adventure at Dalloway Manor” and is set in a spooky, decrepit Victorian mansion.
Video highlights from the 2024 finals

🖋️ Author

Written by

Richard Burns

RECON Team, Industry Correspondent & Writer. Richard is a player enthusiast from Wisconsin. He is a writer, a RECON team member, and a bit of an escape room philosopher. For him, reading, writing, talking and thinking about escape rooms and what they can be is just as interesting as playing them. Always on the lookout for innovation and advances in the industry, Richard appreciates the business of escape rooms as much as the games themselves. He values story, character, and creativity over pure puzzling. He sees a bright future for the industry as it evolves into a more mature storytelling medium.