DreamHack's VP of festivals explains the growth of esports and taking the event to the UK: "We need to be here"

Since its inauguration in 1994, DreamHack has gone on to cement itself as one of the cornerstones of the esports calendar.

Now, following a few smaller events on our shores, DreamHack Birmingham brings the full event to the UK for the very first time.

Ahead of this major step for the DreamHack brand, DreamHack's VP of festivals Shahin Zarrabi talked to me to explained 'why now', and 'why Birmingham'.

"At the start of last year, we took a very fresh approach to our world circuit," Zarrabi began. "We left a couple of markets that weren't really fitting our strategy anymore, and we were looking at where it would make sense to enter going forward.

"The UK definitely popped up as one of the biggest gaming markets in the world, one of the biggest esports markets in the world. But we also noticed that there was a huge gap left here due to Insomnia [ceasing to] exist, EGX looking to de-scope. And for a nation so big and a gaming community so big, we were like, 'We need to be here'.

"And Birmingham turned out to be a perfect location for that, because you can fly people in easily, you have a great convention centre, and there's a huge community already in the city. For us, it checked all the boxes."

DreamHack has always been a major player in the esports scene; Zarrabi himself refers to it as the one-time "kingmaker of esports" for its role in the early Counter-Strike, Dota, Starcraft and League of Legends scenes.

In the three decades since its founding, DreamHack has been front and centre as esports has evolved from those more amateurish LAN events into a true global entertainment phenomenon, something Zarrabi credits to a few reasons.

"A couple of things happened at the same time, around 2010/11. [There was] widespread social media and phone access, together with livestreaming services becoming a thing.

"So, at the time, it was Justin.tv, later Twitch, and later on YouTube also, and now we have a variety of those platforms. And then, two games – StarCraft and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – grew really big, and later on, Dota and League of Legends as well.

"And so, all of these three together were the perfect formula to rapidly, almost like a step-change, increase the professionalism, the money, the revenues, the player-base, platforms; everything you need to build a functioning esports ecosystem just had a 10-year leap in just a couple of years."

DreamHack's entry into the UK market comes at a tumultuous time for live events, with the aforementioned demise of the Insomnia Gaming Festival and scaling-back of EGX.

As much of an opportunity as this is for DreamHack, I asked Zarrabi about the pressures of live events in 2026 and what steps are being taken to remain relevant into the future.

"I think there's a practical part and there's a future part. The practical part of it is – and a lot of convention organisers will blame it on the pandemic, but this was true even before the pandemic – that it's getting more and more costly to organise events.

"And that's why the convention or event industry has taken either to super-VIP premium packages, or they go towards doing professional conferences rather than consumer ones. And I won't lie, that affects us as well."

As for the future, Zarrabi believes that some events have become too reliant on their core demographic – "they've not realised that the audience has aged up".

For Zarrabi, many conventions are chasing older fans, or more specifically, their wallets, and risk turning their events into a sea of booths selling "things you could just buy on Amazon".

The solution, therefore, is to appeal to the next generation of gamers, one that "didn't grow up with gaming being taboo or a little bit nerdy," which he views as a largely untapped market.

"There aren't a lot of places for [Gen Z and Gen Alpha] to meet, to organise, or to see each other in real life. They're much more in their phones. They have higher rates of depression. [They] feel lonely.

"And so, we're going to abandon this model that generic gaming conventions have. We want to do something new. We want to do it for this generation. Right now, that's the second part, which I believe is more interesting.

"That's the only way we believe we can grow, because we're not going to win, we're not going to grow if we try to do exactly the same thing as all other gaming events and conventions have been doing."

Beyond simply appealing to the younger generation, it's this focus on the offline aspect and how it facilitates social interaction that Zarrabi believes is key.

"At the end of the day, all of us are human beings, right? And what we love the most is to see other human beings, be with them, have shared moments.

"And it's so interesting. Every time we do a festival, we ask the people in our surveys afterwards, 'What was the top reason you came to the festival?' What every event has in common is that the top choice is either 'I came here to hang out with my friends' or 'I came here to meet new people.'

"And I think there's an expectation as organisers that pure content is what gets people there. But that's not what [attendees] are saying. That's not why they're coming back.

"It's clear for us that in-person events are important because even if you play your games at home, you want to see others share your passion, you want to meet new people, you want to do it in a physical setting.

"And so that's why our focus is so much on creating something that's unique, so you really feel like you want to come there, because once you're there, we're sure you want to come back next year as well."

DreamHack Birmingham takes place at the NEC on 27-29 March 2026.

Tickets are available from the official DreamHack website.