As the breakout indie game turns ten, its creators opted to celebrate in suitably elaborate fashion. With 15,000 screaming fans gathered in Paris’ La Défense Arena, 2026’s second Rocket League Major tournament culminated in a genuine surprise – a teaser trailer for the long-awaited sequel.
A 35-second video confirmed that Rocket League 2 will be the first-ever Unreal Engine 6 game, giving fans a glimpse at newly shiny cars tearing up a glistening, green football pitch. Outside of the new engine, however, details on the sequel remain shrouded in mystery. So, in a bid to see what the next ten years of Rocket League hold, VGC spoke to the game’s creators, a pro player, and veteran shoutcasters about the reality of – and the community’s hopes for – Rocket League 2.
Originally made by a scrappy team of 50 people and released to little fanfare, Rocket League has since been sold to Epic Games – becoming the company’s second biggest title behind Fortnite. In January 2026, Rocket League (once again) surpassed over one million concurrent players, comfortably cementing Rocket League as one of the biggest esports around.
It’s a sight that’s all too plain to see as I roam the La Defense arena on a Friday afternoon. Despite being a school day, as the first match rolls around at 3pm, most of the seats are already taken. Gathered here for Rocket League’s 2026’s second ‘Major’ tournament, tens of thousands of fans watch 16 teams from seven different regions flipping and revving their way towards a prize pool of over $350,000, all hoping to make it to September’s World Championships.
Thanks to the success of homegrown teams like Karmine Corp and Team Vitality, French fans have shown up in full force, bringing drums, painting their faces, and erupting into a sea of cheers as their heroes go head-to-head. As the beers continue to flow and the crowd’s anticipation rises to an audible hum, it’s an impressively lively atmosphere for an esports tournament – a world away from what you’d find at Pokemon’s World Championships or even high stake Call of Duty tournaments.
“The game with its overtimes and its sharp five-minute matches just creates a lot of energy,” says Cliff Shoemaker, Rocket League’s competitive director. A former ESPN programming manager, Shoemaker built a career championing esports inside the news organization, slowly convincing his NFL-loving colleagues to give esports a shot.
Today he tells me that this fervorous French crowd exudes the kind of electric atmosphere he’d always hoped for from an esport. “There’s a reason we continue to be in Europe a lot,” he says, “European crowds are incredible, they’re energetic, they’re loud, they chant, they sing – it’s just like a football match – which is kind of rare in esports.”
Despite all the visible love for Rocket League’s forward-flipping cars in the arena, for many fans, the announcement of Rocket League 2 couldn’t come soon enough. “It’s been a long time coming,” British Rocket League pro player ‘ApparentlyJack’ Benton says. “We’ve been quite impatient as fans, but I’m happy with what I’ve seen so far. I’m really hoping to see a creative mode where you can make your own maps very easily [too]… more accessibility – so everyone can play – and better onboarding to help people get into the game a little bit easier.”
“I’m really hoping to see a creative mode where you can make your own maps very easily [too]… more accessibility – so everyone can play – and better onboarding to help people get into the game a little bit easier.”
No matter who I speak to, the requests for the sequel from both players and fans are surprisingly modest. “I’d like to see them changing the arenas from time to time, so we have more arenas again,” Davide Kant, German streamer and shoutcaster, tells me, “alongside making the game even more skill-based. It’d be great to be able to choose which side you spawn from… or even to add a boost on the ceiling. Stuff like this would go down very well.”
For Mauricio Longoni, senior game developer on Rocket League, one of the biggest inspirations for new mechanics has actually come from high-level techniques discovered by players. “We work with our players and learn from them. The game has evolved a lot already in the last ten years, right? There are mechanics that [players have] discovered, and then we made them official mechanics. They will keep finding these things… and we’ll keep evolving in that direction”.
Despite the changes that many fans are clamoring for, German shoutcaster Brass believes that Epic’s sequel shouldn’t start too far from the mechanics that make Rocket League so popular. “I think that the most important thing is that Rocket League stays true to its DNA, “ says Brass, “a lot of people are screaming for big changes, and I get that – you feel like the game is getting stale and then you’re comparing it to other competitive games, like League of Legends, which are having these major shifts. Yet I feel like you should not just completely change up the game.”
Luckily for fans, it seems Pysonix agrees. “Just like you don’t change the mass of a basketball, we don’t want to change what makes the game so competitive, “ says Longoni, “that’s the special thing about Rocket League – It depends only on the physics and on your ability to influence the physics – just like kicking a soccer ball around the field.”
One change, however, can’t come soon enough. Thanks to its new influx of players, Rocket League has recently found itself plagued by cheaters. While Epic tells me it’s been rolling out updates to tackle this problem, Brass is hopeful that the new engine will help level the playing field.
“I think that [ the new game] will have better options for anti-cheat.” Says Brass. “This is what has been driving the community crazy for the last couple of months. Unreal Engine six [will also] be an engine that developers actually know how to handle, so we don’t need any legacy developers for Unreal Engine three – [an engine] that no one else uses anymore.”
“Just like you don’t change the mass of a basketball, we don’t want to change what makes the game so competitive. That’s the special thing about Rocket League”
Despite its UE3 origins, Rocket League endures because of its winning marriage of spectacle and simplicity. Where watching League of Legends or Starcraft can be baffling to the uninitiated, Rocket League’s 4 v4 showdowns are just as readable as watching the World Cup. “Rocket League is very easy to understand…” says Benton, “Anyone can get involved. My grandma watches me, and she’s over 80 years old.”
It helps that the level of production in Paris is hugely impressive. Boasting an Unreal Engine-powered light show, smoke, and lasers, and a suitably futuristic-looking stage, Rocket League creates a spectacle that gives traditional sports a run for their money.
It’s also a blast to watch. As skilled players keep the ball flying through the air and 4×4 trucks soar gracefully across the ceiling, these monstrous motors look impressively nimble. “I think we’ve identified that if we can get people to hit an aerial, or do some type of non-traditional goal, then you can get them hooked,” explains Shoemaker, on getting new players to stick with the game. “At the moment we need to work on the onboarding for this game and future games. If you can nail that and get them to that first moment where they have that experience, it’s like nothing else.”
With a 1.2 million dollar prize pool announced for September’s Rocket League’s World Championships, it’s little surprise that registrations for these competitions are up 24% year on year. “I think this growth is happening because Rocket League has now established itself as a form of sport,” says Longoni. “It’s not a simulation of soccer, it’s not a simulation of an existing physical sport, Rocket League is its own thing created from the ground up to be a truly competitive sport.”
Still, as Blizzard’s disastrous Overwatch 2 proved, there is no guarantee that a sequel to an esports phenomenon will automatically be a hit – a lesson that Epic seems all too keenly aware of. “We have to be really smart about it – we’re not going to rush e-sports”, says Shoemaker. “We’re not just going to immediately go to Rocket League Championships [with the sequel], we have to give players tons of time to get there.”
As over 500,000 fans tuned into these Paris Majors live, Rocket League finds itself slowly catching up to the multi-million Viewership figures of League of Legends, Counter Strike 2, and Valorant. These three juggernauts aside, for most esports, half a million viewers would be the peak of their popularity.
Yet as the aging 2016 game continues to defy expectations – and with a sequel just around the corner – Shoemaker believes Rocket League’s ascension has only just begun. “I am proud that we’ve created an open ecosystem where people feel like they have a real chance to compete at a high level,” says Shoemaker.
“Now that we’re going into the future with a new engine…it’s going to open up a lot of really interesting opportunities. We’ve already locked in some cool stuff that will ensure that ‘27 isn’t just a cookie-cutter repeat of ‘26… it’ll be a challenge, but the team is well equipped to entertain folks online and in person with this game and [the sequel].”
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