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I looked at the E-Rankings data for Q2 2026 - so all ranking points gained between April and June - and put together a short overview of the most successful SC2 players of the last quarter. Not meant to replace Aligulac/Liquipedia/any existing ranking, just a different data-based angle looking at results of the past months. I know rankings are always debatable, so this is not meant as “the definitive list”.
Top 10 players of Q2 2026 by ranking points:
1.  herO - 3,490 points
2.  Clem - 1,832 points
3. MaxPax - 1,766 points
4.  Solar - 1,575 points
5. Serral - 1,565 points
6. Maru - 1,402 points
7. Cure - 1,400 points
8. Rogue - 1,381 points
9. Lemon - 1,337 points
10. SHIN - 1,277 points
herO was clearly ahead of everyone else. He won GSL Season 1, GSL Season 2 and RSL Revival Season 5 during the quarter and gained almost twice as many ranking points as Clem in second place. He is also back at #1 in the July world ranking.
Some other things I found interesting:
- Clem passed 400 competitive tournaments (with a prizepool of 500$ and above) and still finished second for the quarter.
- MaxPax reached his 50th tournament win, which only a handful of players have done.
- Serral only played four tournaments during the quarter and won all of them.
- Lemon is the surprise in the top 10. Most of his points came from the SC2 Weekly Open Tournament series in China, and he also reached a new career peak at #22 in the July ranking.
Biggest risers among players who are now in the top 200:
- 乐正绫 (China): #484 → #166 (+318 ranks)
- smile (China) : #401 → #84 (+317 ranks)
- Perceive (South-Korea): #423 → #129 (+294 ranks)
- 秦心sama (China): #349 → #84 (+265 ranks)
- universe (South-Korea): climbed 229 ranks to #146 after returning to the ranking this year
New career peaks in the July ranking:
- Lambo – #14
- Percival – #20
- Lemon – #22
- Silky – #39
- SCV – #50
- JoliwaLoves – #51
- Maplez – #65
- 键盘超人 – #66
- 宅肥 – #68
- DarkUnnamed – #72
- HHH – #80
- smile / 秦心sama – #84
- 小八 – #93
- psz – #95
One thing that stands out is how much the Chinese weekly tournament scene affected the lower half of the top 100 and top 200. Several players reached new peaks or made huge jumps mostly through consistent activity there.
Full write-up with player links and ranking context: Blogpost
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Having specific tournaments, especially weeklies weighted any more than another or having a 'set' value is an outdated practice for sc2. Only really functions for things like EWC where it got every best player by default.
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Head to head should should have almost the entirety of the impact, and any tournament 'value' should be determined dynamically based on participants, and not on an arbitrary prize value.
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herO winning this isn't surprising, but what makes me wonder is Serral having won 4 tournaments... does this analysis include the 1 show match style Big Brain Bouts as a tournament?
And I agree with Agh... Prize pool isn't a very good metric for determining the quality of a tournament.
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United States33681 Posts
Funny, I think prize money won is one of the best measures, especially in the current environment which is almost completely open 
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I'd say, just compare for example HSC 29's line up with Pig Sty 7 or LiuLu.. double the prize pool but the average rank / quality of the players was much lower.
But to each their own... I'd always look at the participating players / overall field and format before prize money though.
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hero is definitely the biggest winner in 2026. Highest prize pool player this year
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I agree on the result, but not on the reasoning... herO beat basically every major player to amass his victories. If hypothetically, there was a tournament with 100k for the winner and Classic won it, I still wouldn't say that he is the best player in 2026.
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I think it depends on what you want to measure. I named it "most successful" instead of "best" for a reason. Winning a tournament is in my opinion being successful, no matter who played in that tournament. But if you want to measure the skill or strength of players then surely it depends on who they played against.
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I think this is a great indicator and was insightful!
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On July 11 2026 11:04 CheeseInSpace wrote:
I think it depends on what you want to measure. I named it "most successful" instead of "best" for a reason. Winning a tournament is in my opinion being successful, no matter who played in that tournament. But if you want to measure the skill or strength of players then surely it depends on who they played against.
Well, the title of the link is "herO, Clem, Maxpax: Here are the best Starcraft players of quarter 2 of 2026
Full StarCraft 2 Player Ranking", perhaps that's why I got a little bit confused, what the exact intention is.
I also don't want to be too critical but even success and earning the most - at least to me - are not necessarily synonymous. As I laid out, counting BBB, which is not even a real tournament but three different show matches with separate price pools for each match, seems questionable.
BBB also highlights another issue for me: the format itself isn't taken into account. Serral only had to win a single match to receive those ranking points. Even many weekly tournaments require winning multiple consecutive matches, and a major multi-day tournament typically requires defeating several top opponents through group stages and/or playoff brackets. Sure, BBB also doesn't hand out the biggest of prize pools, but the underlying mechanism can be applied to all kinds of scenarios (no group stage tournaments, single elim. versus double elim., etc.).
As in the link it also states "E-Rankings compares esports teams and players using ranking points based on tournament results, opponent strength and recent performance.": May I ask how "opponent strength" is exactly measured and taken into account?
From the calculation page "https://www.e-rankings.com/about/calculation.php" , I can't see where or how opponent strength is incorporated. As I understand it, the only inputs are the tournament prize pools over the last 12 months and the player's finishing position for each tournament. Or am I missing something?
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You are raising valid points, thanks for looking into it in that much detail.
First, you are right about the wording. I used "most successful" in the thread title for a reason, because this is not meant to be a pure skill rating. I changed it in the blogpost as well. What the ranking currently measures is tournament-result success over a rolling 12-month period, weighted by prize pool and placement. So "best" is not the ideal wording here.
BBB is definitely an edge case. I included it, but I agree that its format is very different from a normal group-stage/bracket tournament. Since the prize pool is relatively low, its impact on the overall ranking is limited, but I can see the argument that formats like this should maybe be treated differently.
And yes, you are also right about the opponent-strength sentence. That part was a relic from an older version of the calculation text. I have removed that wording from the box. Thanks for catching it.
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Thanks for coming back and sorry for nitpicking! Once upon a time I made a GOAT list and sonce then I always look deep into methodologies to potentially tweak my own analysis.
Keep up the good work!
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Thanks, i appreciate if people nitpick in a constructive and friendly way, it makes my own work better.
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United States1954 Posts
On July 11 2026 17:00 PremoBeats wrote:
Thanks for coming back and sorry for nitpicking! Once upon a time I made a GOAT list and sonce then I always look deep into methodologies to potentially tweak my own analysis.
Keep up the good work!
Possible Addendum for 2027? Maybe...
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Haha, as things are now, I won't have time to finish even the update of the data until 2024. Incorporating all the other players is so much work...
I managed to finish about half of the players but as there are other projects that take up my time atm, I haven't been able to work on the update for several months. Aren't you working on something at the moment as well?
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EPT
