EVO France 2026 Brings Back One of Tekken’s Most Talked-About Characters

France’s biggest fighting game event will host the next major Tekken 8 reveal, as Bandai Namco prepares to show the gameplay trailer for Roger Jr., the third character of Season 3. And his return raises a surprisingly interesting question: why him?

The European fighting game season is back in the spotlight with EVO France 2026, bringing one of the biggest events on the international competitive calendar back to Nice.

Following its first edition, EVO returns to the French Riviera with a lineup featuring some of the biggest names and games in the competitive scene. Tekken 8 will naturally be among the headline titles, alongside Street Fighter 6, Guilty Gear -Strive-, 2XKO, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising and Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls.

But EVO France will be more than just another stop on the competitive calendar as for Tekken 8 it will also provide the stage for one of the most curious reveals of Season 3.

Bandai Namco has confirmed that the event will feature the gameplay trailer for Roger Jr., the third additional character joining the roster this season.

EVO France: Where Competition Meets Big Reveals

EVO is no longer just about tournaments. Over the years, the biggest event in the fighting game scene has also become one of the main stages for major announcements.

Competition remains at the heart of EVO, but the tournaments are now surrounded by trailers, character reveals and updates designed to grab the attention of the entire fighting game community.

EVO France is following the same path: the 2026 edition will take place in Nice at the Palais des Expositions, Nice Acropolis, with Tekken 8 among the main games featured at the event. EVO describes it as the return of the Evolution Championship Series to the French Riviera following last year’s debut.

For the competitive Tekken scene, EVO France is also far from an isolated event. Bandai Namco has included EVO Nice among the Master+ events of the TEKKEN World Tour 2026, alongside the other major EVO tournaments of the season.

That makes the setting even more important: On one side, some of the best players in the world will be fighting on stage, on the other, the community will get its next look at how the Tekken 8 roster is evolving.

And the character taking the spotlight is hardly one that could ever go unnoticed!

Roger Jr. Returns to Tekken 8

Roger Jr. is certainly no stranger to the series, but he belongs to the more absurd and unpredictable side of Tekken that has always been part of the franchise’s identity. A fighting kangaroo might seem completely out of place in a roster built around martial artists, family feuds and mostly human fighters.

And yet, that apparent absurdity is also part of what makes Tekken unmistakably Tekken: season 3 has already brought Kunimitsu and Bob back to the roster, while Roger Jr. represents a completely different kind of choice.

Bandai Namco has basically given one of the season’s slots to a character who represents not only the history of the franchise, but also its more comedic and surreal side.

For some fans, that is exactly what makes Tekken special: a roster capable of jumping from traditional martial artists to characters that seem to have escaped from an entirely different game.

For others, every new DLC slot inevitably sparks the same discussion: who else could have taken that place? Especially because Roger Jr. comes with even more baggage than most returning characters.

His absence from Tekken 7 was linked to a rather unusual episode. A few months before the game reached Western markets, a viral video showed an Australian man punching a kangaroo after the animal had grabbed his dog.

The video triggered a heated debate online and, according to producer Katsuhiro Harada, it directly influenced the decision not to include Roger Jr. in the plans for Tekken 7. The concern was that featuring a fighting kangaroo could attract criticism from animal rights activists, potentially extending the controversy well beyond the gaming community.

The story became even more complicated when reports suggested that the decision had been caused by pressure from PETA.

Harada later clarified that the organisation had made no such request, the concern had come from Bandai Namco itself. In other words, Roger Jr. was not removed because of an actual campaign against Tekken 7, but because the company wanted to avoid the possibility of a media controversy before it happened.

The decision became even more curious considering that Kuma and Panda were still part of the roster.

Harada’s explanation was characteristically ironic: a bear is obviously stronger than a human, he argued, so seeing one fighting a person would not generate quite the same reaction.

For years, Roger Jr. remained outside the main series, to the point where his return began to feel increasingly unlikely.

That makes his appearance in Tekken 8 particularly interesting. It is the return of one of the strangest characters in Tekken history and closes the loop on that story of almost a decade ago.

Everything Will Come Down to the Gameplay

So far, we have only seen his teaser.

The real test will come with the Roger Jr. gameplay trailer at EVO France. That is when we will finally see how Bandai Namco has reworked the character for Tekken 8, and, more importantly, how much of his classic fighting style has survived the transition.