BMIC 2026 was meant to be KRAFTON India’s showcase to the rest of Asia, but it has now been hit by a theft scandal. Indian participant Gladiators Esports’ star Neyo has said that cash was stolen from player bags in the backstage area at the Dome in Mumbai, and that Japanese players lost money as well.
The BGMI International Cup ran from 30 October to 1 November at The Dome, SVP Indoor Stadium, NSCI. Six Indian teams faced five from South Korea and five from Japan there, with a ₹1 crore prize pool on the line. According to Neyo, the money went missing from an area where players had no choice but to leave their belongings while they were on stage.
Neyo says cash vanished from bags left backstage
Neyo explained that teams were required to leave their things on tables in the backstage area during matches, from bags and pillows to food. On Day 2, after his matches were over, he went back to his bag and found that a keychain he had been carrying, one that several people had complimented, was no longer there.
“the whole cash was gone.”
At that point, as Neyo describes, he did not think it was serious enough to push further, and he said he would check with the management instead. The bigger shock came only after the event had finished on 1 November, when another fellow player, Robin came to his room with news of his own. According to Neyo, Robin told him that ₹5,500 (about $50) had gone from his bag. That prompted Neyo to check his own wallet, and when he opened it, he said, “the whole cash was gone.” He put his own loss at around ₹9,500 (about $95), on top of the missing keychain. This incident is from the account of Gladiator Esports’ Neyo himself.
Neyo said the organisers, Tesseract Esports, are checking the CCTV footage from the backstage area and expect to update the players within one to two days. Neither KRAFTON India nor Tesseract Esports had made a public statement about the thefts at the time of writing, and no arrest or recovery has been reported.
Japanese players lost cash too, including yen
The most damaging part of Neyo’s account concerns the visitors. He said that several Japanese players also found cash missing from their belongings, and that the money taken from them included Japanese currency.
Japan sent five teams to BMIC 2026 through the PUBG Mobile Japan League, with Valor, REIGNITE, Versus, Making The Road and KINOTROPE gaming all making the journey. KINOTROPE gaming were the best-placed of them in eighth, while Valor and Versus finished 15th and 16th. South Korea’s five teams, led by eventual champions NS RedForce, shared the same venue, although Neyo has not said that any Korean player was affected.
For overseas players, the backstage area is supposed to be the one part of a LAN where they can leave a bag without worrying about it. These teams travelled thousands of kilometres to play in India, and some of them, like NS RedForce’s HyunBin, went straight back to the grind after a 12-hour trip home.
A bad look for India’s biggest international BGMI event
BMIC exists to bring the best of Korea and Japan to Indian audiences, and to show that India can host a world-class PUBG Mobile event. This year’s edition also carried two places at the PUBG Mobile Global Championship 2026, with NS RedForce and DRX taking them home.
Gladiators, meanwhile, came agonisingly close to PMGC themselves. Neyo’s side won three Chicken Dinners in Mumbai but finished fourth on 144 points, seven behind DRX, which makes these revelations an even more bitter end to their tournament.
The amounts involved may be small by the standards of a ₹1 crore event, but that is not really the point. The thefts happened backstage, in the one place players were told to leave their bags, and they took place while those same players were competing on stage. That is why the CCTV review matters so much. If the footage identifies who was responsible, KRAFTON India and Tesseract Esports will be expected to explain how someone could walk off with cash from player bags during the match days.
Until then, fans in India have been left embarrassed by the thought of international guests flying home poorer than they arrived. The full field and results remain on our BMIC 2026 rosters page, while players await the outcome of the organisers’ investigation.
