Sega's updated their near-term Puyo Puyo eSports calendar with a surprising number of events—in addition to the previously-announced Puyo Puyo Cup open event at Tokyo Big Sight on January 28, they've revealed several other events scheduled for the first quarter of 2024: https://info-esports.sega.jp/puyo/detail/4919/
- February 12: Puyo Puyo Grand Prix 2 (hosted @ Sega HQ with a live audience; presumably another 32-player round-robin invitational)
- March 3: Puyo Puyo Ladies Cup (women-only event, hosted @ Sega HQ with a live audience; they generally run a series of online qualifiers to determine a top-16 for the offline finals)
- March 17: Puyo Puyo Grand Prix Final (hosted @ Sega HQ with a live audience; presumably another 32-player round-robin invitational)
- March 23: Puyo Puyo Ranking Pro Senbatsu (hosted @ Sega HQ with a live audience; tournament based on ranking points across the last ~ year of play and other factors, used to determine new recipients of the pro license required to play cash-prize tournaments)
Sega was extremely quiet for most of 2023, and even after they promised more info at the end of the year, I don't think anyone expected so many official events in such a short period of time—some more online events would be nice, I'm sure, but any effort's better than none. Might these events be a concentrated promotional push for... y'know what, let's not even go there.
They haven't revealed any further details for most of these events, and the one I'm most curious about is the Ladies Cup: this will be the third one they've done and they've proven to be quite popular, both as spectator events and with all the players who feel a specific motivation to enter this event vs. more open or elite-level events... but this'll also be the first one since the passing of two-time champ Akajikou, who succumbed to cancer last year at age 29, and I do wonder how they might address her passing.