Welcome to 2026! Happy New Year. I hope it’ s a great one for you! Before we talk more about 2026, let’ s have a look back at the 2025 NXL season— and what a season it was both in the U. S. and in Europe. In its ninth season since taking over where the PSP left off, the NXL has become the largest attended paintball tournament series in history, and it’ s not even close. In 2025 the league continued its upward trajectory in both team attendance and presence in the industry and the game itself.
The NXL Pros
As the 2024 NXL season wound down it became obvious that PaintballFIT was going to‘ fit” right in with the likes of Red Legion, San Diego Dynasty, Edmonton Impact, San Antonio X-Factor, Houston Heat and all of the other top pro teams on the circuit. In fact, their learning curve was much like Dynasty’ s was 25 years ago, when they won the World Cup to end
Photo by John McGloughlin their first Pro season— just as FIT did in their first season. And just like Dynasty’ s encore second season, PaintballFit came out hot, winning the first event of 2025. And they did something not even Dynasty could pull off this early on— a Pro threepeat as they won Atlantic City, the 2025 season’ s second event.
Red Legion, 2024 NXL season Rankings winners, made it to the podium their first two events of the 2025 season. They would get their first event win in the Midwest Open, proving what most of us all ready knew … don’ t ever count Red Legion out. Any roster that includes Berdnikov, Prikhidni, J-Rab and Simotrov has a chance to beat anybody, anytime. In the fourth event of the season, Edmonton Impact would get their first win of the season. In fact, it was Impact’ s first win since 2022 when they won Chicago. Tampa Bay Damage won the fifth and arguably the most important event of the 2025 season when they took down FIT in the finals.
0114 paintball. media magazine