DreamHack Anaheim 2022 has been canceled

DreamHack Anaheim 2022, which was scheduled to be held next February, won’t be taking place as expected, the company announced.

The Swedish esports production organization known for its gaming festivals and esports competitions revealed that its next event has been canceled due to “increased difficulties” in terms of hosting it.

At DreamHack Anaheim 2022, a collaboration with 343 Industries was set to take place to host the Halo Infinite HCS North American Regional Championship. But that will now take place as its own event on the same dates (Feb. 11 to 13), according to DreamHack’s announcement. DreamHack Anaheim 2022 was also supposed to play host to an ESL Challenger CS:GO event, but an announcement on that tournament’s rescheduling is yet to be made.

DreamHack Anaheim was going to be the first DreamHack gaming event to take place in North America in two years. The company only hosted one event in 2020, DreamHack Anaheim 2020, and every other event has been held online since then.

“We were all really looking forward to our first in-person festival in the United States in two years, so canceling DreamHack Anaheim was not an easy decision,” ESL senior vice president of festivals Krzysztof Pikiewicz said. “However, DreamHack creates a space for our community to connect, explore, win, play, and be themselves through an interactive, gaming lifestyle experience and we simply didn’t feel like Anaheim would be able to live up to that in February.”

This is the second event that DreamHack has had to modify recently. Earlier this year, DreamHack Atlanta was pushed back to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving forward, the Swedish esports event organizer will be focusing on DreamHack Dallas and DreamHack Summer, both of which are supposed to take place in June 2022.