Tournament:EVO 2019

Evolution 2019, or simply EVO 2019, was the 18th edition of the Evolution Championship Series, a fighting game tournament held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. EVO 2019 took place on August 2nd to 4th, 2019, at the. It was announced on February 26th, by EVO's tournament director Joey "" Cuellar, that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would make its debut as an official game on the EVO 2019 game lineup. While it was confirmed to replace if it released in time in 2018, this was the first EVO for Ultimate post-release. Notably, for the first time since EVO 2012, Super Smash Bros. Melee was not revealed to be in the lineup—although Melee was still present as a side event on August 3rd—making EVO 2019 the first one since 2014 to feature only one Smash game at EVO instead of two. Ultimate ran on version 3.1.0, rather than running on 4.0.0 with, due to the update being released after the cutoff date for patches and being a few days before the tournament.

It is currently the largest in person Smash tournament of all time, with 3,534 entrants signed up for Ultimate.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate singles
(3,534 entrants) Top 32 Bracket Top 8 Bracket

Super Smash Bros. Melee singles
(111 entrants) Top 4 Bracket

Trivia

 * won the largest cash prize for an Ultimate tournament at $21,204 until it was surpassed by making $47,739.60 at.
 * MkLeo was congratulated by series director Masahiro Sakurai for his victory. Sakurai thanked the participants for a good show, and watched some parts of the tournament, but missed the Grand Finals due to a meeting.
 * Due to flight issues, was unable to attend the tournament, where he was seeded to eventually face MkLeo. In what was dubbed by some as the "Bowser curse", none of the  players that had their matches shown on the official EVO Twitch stream won their sets.
 * is the only returning player from that placed Top 8 in the singles tournaments for both Smash 4 and Ultimate.
 * Coincidentally, this is also the second year in a row placed just outside of Top 8 and got 9th for both games.
 * As there was only one official EVO stream for the Ultimate tournament, players like and  went out of their way to provide the results of numerous off-stream sets via Twitter and Twitch, respectively. This led to praise from the community for their efforts.
 * After lost to, he pointed out that Proto had been looking at his phone in the middle of the set and asked if there was a ruling on it (due to the possibility of mid-set coaching, though Proto was apparently looking up kill combos for Inkling). After asking  (who helped direct the tournament), Bear told him that there was no such ruling and that the set was legitimate. Although some accused him of being a sore loser, he later confirmed on Twitter that he had no intention of replaying the set and was surprised that no such measure was put in place beforehand.
 * Despite having kidney stones, which required him to miss later on,  was able to place 5th at the tournament.
 * With and his Smash protégé  both placing 49th,  was the highest-placing player in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate singles that is otherwise known for being a professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player, placing 17th.
 * This tournament marks the worst placement for, with a placement of 65th.
 * Furthermore, 's 97th-place finish overtook 's 49th at for the worst placement for a previous EVO winner in both Smash 4 and Ultimate.
 * Viewership of the tournament peaked at over 279,000 concurrent viewers across all streams, making it not only the most viewed Super Smash Bros. tournament in history, but also the most viewed EVO game of all time.
 * The VOD for Ultimate's Grand Finals has over three million views on YouTube. It is the most viewed Ultimate video out of all of VGBootCamp's channels. It is the first Ultimate tournament set to reach two million views on YouTube.
 * On November 2018, Twitch streamer Ninja posted a now-infamous Tweet telling the Smash community that he had something planned for them. During a poker game with on May 1st, 2022, Ninja alleged that the Tweet was referencing his plans on donating $500,000 to the EVO 2019 prize pool, however he was unable to go through with it due to a lack of communication from Nintendo.