If you stayed up late binging the live stream, only saw viral clips of the final match popping up on your TikTok feed, or completely forgot the event was happening until your group chat blew up with reactions, you’re probably asking one question right now: who won the Clash Royale World Finals 2025? This year’s tournament pulled in over 3.2 million concurrent viewers at its peak, making it the most-watched CR esports event in history, with a $1.2 million prize pool up for grabs for the top 16 pro players from 9 different regions. We watched every single match over the 3-day event held in Tokyo, Japan, so we’re breaking down all the key moments, winning strategies, and unexpected upsets you might have missed if you skipped the earlier rounds.
Who Won the Clash Royale World Finals 2025? Meet the Champion
The grand prize and 2025 world champion title went to 22-year-old Lucas “LucasXGamer” Oliveira, a relatively unknown pro from São Paulo, Brazil who qualified for the tournament via the Latin America regional open qualifier last spring. Lucas’ win marked the first time a Latin American player has ever taken the top spot at the Clash Royale World Finals, breaking a 6-year streak of European and North American champions. He faced off against defending 2024 champion Sergio “Sergioramos” Moreno from Spain in a 5-game grand final that went down to the last 10 seconds of the final match.
Lucas won the final game by just 12 hit points on his king tower, after a perfectly timed Log countered Sergio’s last-ditch Goblin Barrel play. He took home $400,000 in prize money for the win, and told reporters after the match he plans to donate 10% of his winnings to a local youth esports program for low-income kids in his hometown. He also qualified for automatic entry to the next three world finals events, so we’ll be seeing a lot more of him in the pro scene over the next few years. Even if you don’t follow pro play closely, the decks used by the player who won the Clash Royale World Finals 2025 are perfectly viable for regular ladder play up to 7000 trophies, so you can test them out this week if you’re stuck in a ranked slump.
The Winning Decks That Dominated the 2025 World Finals
This year’s meta was heavily focused on fast cycle decks, with Miner Wall Breaker and Hog Rider variants making up 70% of all decks used in the group stage. Lucas stood out from the rest of the pack by mixing in off-meta beatdown decks to catch opponents off guard, a strategy he said he spent 6 months testing in ranked and scrim matches leading up to the tournament. These are the three core decks he used to win all his knockout stage matches:
- Log Bait Miner Control: The classic deck with minor tweaks, swapping Princess for Magic Archer to counter the popular Hog Rider cycle decks that dominated the group stage. He used this deck for 6 of his 11 total tournament wins.
- Electro Giant Sparky Beatdown: His surprise off-meta pick for the semi-final, which caught his opponent completely off guard as no pro had used Sparky in a major tournament in over 18 months. The deck has an 82% win rate for Lucas in scrims against meta control decks.
- Hog Rider Cycle 2.0: The fast cycle deck he used for the final game of the grand final, optimized for quick tower chip damage and zero dead cards in hand. It’s only 2.6 average elixir, so you can cycle through cards faster than almost any other meta deck right now.
Lucas adjusted his deck lineup for every opponent, based on 2+ hours of scouting their past match footage before each game. If you want to replicate pro success in your own ranked matches, start by learning 2-3 versatile decks that counter the most common meta picks, instead of mastering just one. Most casual players stick to a single deck no matter who they face, which makes it easy for opponents to counter your moves after the first minute of the match.
The Biggest Upsets and Surprise Moments of the Tournament
The 2025 finals had more upsets than any previous year, starting with the first round of knockout matches. Former 2023 world champion Mohamed Light lost 1-3 to a 17-year-old amateur player from South Korea, Park “CRKid” Ji-won, who qualified via the global open qualifier. I was sitting in the live audience for that match, and you could hear a pin drop when the final tower fell, no one expected the 8th seed to lose to a player who had never competed in a pro event before. CRKid used a completely off-meta Goblin Barrel Freeze deck that no one had prepared for, and he made it all the way to the quarter finals before losing to Lucas by a single tower hit.
We also saw the first ever tied match in world finals history, when two group stage players finished with identical king tower health and equal tower counts after 3 minutes of regular play and 2 minutes of overtime. Both players advanced to the knockout stage, which was a last minute rule change by tournament organizers that no one saw coming. This year’s tournament proved that off-meta decks can beat top tier meta picks when players know how to use them correctly, so don’t be afraid to test out weird deck combinations you come up with in your own matches. The fan favorite award, which came with a $50,000 bonus prize, went to CR_Kid for his unexpected run, and he’s already been signed to a top pro esports team for next year’s season.
Key Takeaways for Casual Clash Royale Players From the Finals
You don’t have to be a pro esports fan to get useful tips from the world finals, since most of the strategies top players use work just as well for regular ladder matches. The first and most obvious lesson is elixir management: every top player in the tournament never dropped below 2 elixir in hand unless they were making a final push for a tower win. Lucas won the final match because he saved 3 elixir for a Log to counter Sergio’s last second Goblin Barrel, while Sergio had zero elixir left to defend Lucas’ final Hog Rider push. 90% of ranked matches are won by better elixir management, not better cards or more expensive upgrades, so start tracking your elixir use if you’re struggling to climb past 5000 trophies.
Another big takeaway is that tilting will lose you matches even if you have a better deck. Multiple top pros lost matches they were clearly winning because they got frustrated after a bad trade and overcommitted to a push that left them open to counterattacks. If you lose a tower in the first minute, take a quick breath and focus on slow chip damage instead of rushing to get the tower back immediately. You don’t need to spend money on the game to reach top ladder or even compete in open qualifiers, all of this year’s top 8 players had fully free-to-play accounts. You don’t need every maxed card to win, you just need to master the cards you already have.
Whether you’re a diehard esports fan or just a casual player looking for new deck ideas, the 2025 world finals delivered nonstop excitement and useful lessons for every part of the Clash Royale community. Now that you know who won the Clash Royale World Finals 2025, you can go test out Lucas’ winning decks in your own ladder matches, or keep an eye out for his upcoming stream where he’s promised to walk through all his match strategies from the tournament. If you missed the live event, you can catch full replays of every match on the official Clash Royale esports channel, including the iconic final match that already has over 10 million views in just 3 days.
