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BEL2026 Alexander Delaney Memorial Championship Matchup: 13 Final Fantasy VII Remake vs. 1 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Final Fantasy VII Remake Wins the 2026 Alexander Delaney Memorial Championship
The Defending Champion Goes Back to Back. Square Enix Wins Three Consecutive ADMCs. For Alex.
It is done.
Final Fantasy VII Remake defeated The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in overtime by a score of 4-3, and the defending Alexander Delaney Memorial Champion has done something that has never been done in VGM history. It has gone back to back. A 13 seed. The defending champion. Back to back.
Let the full weight of what this game has accomplished in VGM 2026 land before anything else is said. It entered the Midwest bracket as the 13 seed with an 87 on Metacritic and no realistic expectation of advancing past the first round. It beat God of War: Ragnarok in the Round of 64 by two votes. It beat Ori and the Will of the Wisps in the Round of 32 by two votes. It beat Spider-Man in the Super Sixteen by one vote. It beat Persona 5 Royal in overtime in the Excellent Eight. It beat Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the most reviewed game of 2024 and the continuation of its own story, in the Four Finalists by two votes. And now it has beaten The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the highest-scored game of the entire nine-year VGM era, in overtime in the Alexander Delaney Memorial Championship by one vote.
Seven rounds. Seven games. Seven results that went to Final Fantasy VII Remake by margins that should not have held. All of them held.
The championship match itself was everything the tournament deserved. The score was tied at three going to overtime, which means Breath of the Wild came within one vote of winning the championship in regulation. The overall 1 seed, a 97 Metacritic, 33 million copies sold, the game that defined a generation of open-world design, had the votes it needed to win in regulation and could not find one more. And then overtime began, after a technical delay that pushed the final vote to the following evening, and Final Fantasy VII Remake found the vote it needed, as it has found the vote it needed in every round of this tournament, and the defending champion is the 2026 Alexander Delaney Memorial Champion.
Breath of the Wild ran a remarkable tournament. It won six rounds without a single comfortable result, surviving overtime against Disco Elysium, beating Celeste, beating Baldur's Gate 3 by two votes, beating NieR: Automata by one vote in the Four Finalists. The overall 1 seed of VGM 2026 arrived at the championship match and pushed the defending champion to overtime and came within a single vote of the title. That is not a failure. That is the performance of a game that earned its 1 seed and proved it in every round of competition. It goes home as the overall 1 seed that pushed the defending champion to overtime in the championship, which is exactly the result a 97 Metacritic deserves.
Square Enix has now won three consecutive Alexander Delaney Memorial Championships. Final Fantasy VI in 2024. Final Fantasy VII Remake in 2025. Final Fantasy VII Remake again in 2026. The dynasty that Alex Delaney would have recognized immediately, built on the franchise he loved most, has now produced three straight champions, and the game that carried that dynasty through the 2026 tournament did it as a 13 seed against some of the finest competition this format has ever produced.
The championship is named for Alex Delaney, who was born in 1994 and passed away in 2019. He was a JRPG and Final Fantasy enthusiast who loved classic games and loved this medium. He never played Final Fantasy VII Remake. It came out after he was gone. But the story it tells, the characters it renders with the fidelity they always deserved, the world it rebuilds from something he almost certainly loved, all of it is the kind of thing he would have recognized and felt and voted for without hesitation.
The 2026 Alexander Delaney Memorial Championship belongs to Final Fantasy VII Remake. The defending champion. The 13 seed. The game that beat seven opponents in seven rounds by margins that should not have held and held every single time. Back to back. For Alex.
