QHLAN 2026 concluded after five days in Segeltorp (Stockholm) at Black Molly Entertainment’s venue. Doors opened on January 7 and the venue closed on January 11. If you haven’t followed Quake World LANs in a while, the modern QHLAN pitch is pretty straightforward: BYOC if you can, rent gear if you can’t, keep the prize money separate from ticketing and make sure there’s always something live — whether it’s bracket matches, a draft tournament or just endless FFA frags.

In a post on X, Tomas “greykarn” Hermansson said QHLAN 2026 had 84 players from 17 countries on-site.


The results

The headline tournaments this year were 1on1 Masters, 4on4 Draft and 4on4 Clan.

1on1 Masters: The 1v1 title was won by two French players who couldn’t make it to the venue — they were allowed to play online, with speedball beating Bernkaoch in the final.

4on4 Clan: Get Quad or Die Tryin’ ( razor, TheChosenOne, reppie, Mutilator) took first, ahead of Suddendeath ( sd_andeh, carapace, Xantom, bps, lacsap) and Black Book ( Milton, Javve, Creature, Diki).

4on4 Draft: carapace's team (carapace, splash, Oddjob, rusti) won the draft tournament, with bogojoker's team ( bogojoker, mazer, LocKtar, Nidweyr) second and reppie's team ( reppie, niw, rio, namtsui) third.

And because QHLAN never really stops at “just the main brackets”, QWiki also documents two extras:
  • Unofficial 2on2: Milton & carapace finished first.
  • FFA Most Frags: One of the new side features at QHLAN 2026 was a dedicated Free-for-All server that went live at 15:00 on Day 1 and ran throughout the event, with a live leaderboard shown in the venue and online. Timmi finished on top with 8000 total frags and took the special prize for the overall lead.

Format changes

1on1 Masters got a few meaningful adjustments in 2026. Instead of a group stage, QHLAN 2026 used a double-elimination bracket and the top 16 seeds received byes to round two. That’s not just “nicer seeding” — it reduces early-round chaos, keeps the schedule more predictable and helps avoid the classic LAN problem where a couple of long matches create a domino effect. On the team side, 4on4 Clan is listed as double elimination, with BO3/BO5 match formats depending on the stage.

Prize pool

The prize pool was €1166, crowdfunded via PayPal and split 50% to 4on4 Clan and 25% each to 4on4 Draft and 1vs1 Masters. For a quick “is this up or down?” reference point, QWiki lists QHLAN 2024 at €3655. QHLAN’s site is pretty explicit about why this separation exists: ticket fees cover logistics, while prize money depends on viewers and donations.

Logistics and setup

A lot of QHLAN’s appeal is that it’s still a LAN first event — you’re not just watching, you’re hauling gear, finding desk space, syncing schedules, and making sure the venue can keep things moving. This year’s event page emphasized a few practicalities:
  • 100+ seats, plus lounge/spectator area and a cafe on-site
  • You can bring your own PC or rent “top class” PCs/monitors/chairs
  • Food packages (lunch/dinner) and basic quality-of-life stuff (parking, nearby hotels)
  • Ticket tiers at €100 / €150 / €200, labeled Green Armor / Yellow Armor / Red Armor, scaling up to priority seatbooking + mug refills + hoodie
It’s not flashy, but it’s the difference between “LAN with brackets” and “LAN that doesn’t collapse by Friday.”

Watching games

The main stream is the obvious entry point, but QuakeWorld has a nice extra layer now: QuakeWorld Hub aggregates live servers, QTV, streams and recent demos — which is a big deal for events like QHLAN where not every meaningful match is guaranteed to land on the main broadcast.

A bit of QHLAN history

One reason QHLAN still gets treated as “the” QuakeWorld LAN is continuity. QWiki’s page for QHLAN 3 (January 2002) notes that 203 players were signed up, which is still the kind of number people bring up when talking about peak-era QW LAN scale.

More recently, the event’s long-running connection to Quake’s broader legacy shows up in smaller moments around the LAN: a screenshot shared among attendees this year showed one player tagging Elon Musk with a pitch for a Germany-based “QuakeCon EU” mega-event for Quake’s 30th anniversary. And if you want an earlier example of how far QHLAN’s reach can extend, the QHLAN 2022 broadcast included a short video greeting from John Romero.

Links: Official QHLAN2026 Site, QWiki, YouTube, QHub