Overview DreamHack is a three-day gaming festival built around a bring-your-own-computer LAN that runs 24 hours a day, with esports finals, freeplay zones, creators and cosplay filling the halls around it. It began in 1994 in an elementary school in Malung, Sweden, moving from the basement to the cafeteria in its first year, and Guinness World Records has recognized it as the world's largest LAN party. The 2026 calendar set four festivals in four countries: Birmingham at the NEC, Atlanta at the Georgia World Congress Center, Stockholm at Stockholmsmassan and Shanghai. DreamHack merged with ESL in 2020 and is run by ESL FACEIT Group. On site Each festival fills a convention hall. The BYOC LAN runs day and night beside freeplay areas for PC, console, arcade, VR and sim racing, an expo floor of brand and indie game booths, a Main Stage and a Game Stage produced for broadcast, and a Creator Hub where streamers, YouTubers and TikTokers meet fans. Cosplay covers the floor, and Atlanta in 2025 added drag shows and an artist alley. DreamHack Quest runs more than 80 missions through the DreamHack app, and a coin-and-wheel system sends visitors from booth to booth. Atlanta 2025 hosted the Clash of Clans World Championship Finals alongside open-bracket Counter-Strike 2. Audience The festival describes the floor as the place where online squads become real-life hangouts: cosplayers trade tips, creators meet their chat and players find teammates. Visitors travel to play: Stockholm 2025 drew attendees from 70 countries. Talent and Influencers The Creator Hub is invitation-only for creators. DreamHack Atlanta 2024 brought in 500 of them with a combined 55.7 million followers, and DreamHack Stockholm 2024 hosted 258 with 58.6 million. Tournaments on site range from grassroots brackets to official championships; Riot Games ran its Swedish Valorant championship on a DreamHack stage in front of a live audience. Track record At DreamHack Dallas 2025, Lamborghini's booth held visitors an average of 12 minutes, against a typical expo dwell of five to 10, and its campaign logged 7.6 million social impressions. Doritos ran a FACEIT online qualifier in Sweden and Denmark that drew more than 10,000 players and sampled 30,000 products on site. Pantamera, Sweden's can-and-bottle recycling program, reported that recycling among young men aged 13 to 20 rose more than 7% after it partnered with DreamHack; its marketing manager for young adults, Lovisa Lannerstedt, said: "DreamHack are not only our event provider, but they also act as our full-service agency in this partnership." Brand presence Official partners get branding across the festival, custom activation space and placement inside the Freeplay, BYOC and Creator Hub zones, plus integration into Quest. On the expo floor, pre-built booths come plug-and-play with walls, carpet, lighting, power, internet and setup, and larger builds run to custom footprints: Meta brought eight VR stations to a booth of almost 100 square meters, and Microsoft took 200 square meters for PC Game Pass. Brands can also take over a stage with full broadcast production, sample through the LAN and lounges, and host in the VIP lounge or at the partner dinner.