Esports success for Team Durham

For the fifth year in a row, the University of Warwick was crowned the Esports University of the Year, but the chasing pack is definitely getting closer.

Team Durham narrowly missed out on 2nd place by only 61 points and moving up to the podium following last year’s 4th place is a magnificent achievement with a record number of 111 participating universities.

Their success was followed up with a second win of the year for Team Onifans, our women and non-binary multi-university team, at the VALORANT NUEL finals over the weekend of April 22 – 23. The team is made up of 2 players and the coach from Durham University with the remaining players hailing from Chichester, University of the Arts London and Royal Holloway.

NUEL - originally ‘The National University Esports League’ - was founded in 2010 by Loughborough undergraduates to provide all university students, regardless of ability, experience or background, the opportunity to participate in esports, and has gone on to develop student talent who are now working throughout the esports industry.

The Women and Non-Binary VALORANT tournament allows students to mix participants across Universities, so if there aren’t many players available from one University, the community can source a player from another quite easily. 

This win is a great endorsement and success story signalling the strength of our Equality and Diversity Initiative in esports at Durham.

In the 21/22 academic year, the NSE operated British University Esports Championship saw over 2,100 teams from more than 100 universities compete across a number of esports titles. The NSE community platform has over 10,000 verified student accounts created each year with a viewing total of 2 million pages last year.

Find out more

Learn about VALORANT, an online 5v5 first person shooter game

See Team Onifans pick up their VALORANT Spring 2023 Grand Champions Trophy 

Learn more about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Durham University