If you think you’re fast at solving escape rooms, then there’s really only one place to put your skills to the test: The World Escape Room Championship. Organised by Lock Me, the Escape Room Championship (or ER Champ for short) is an annual international escape room competition where teams from all over the world compete for the fastest score in a series of custom-built escape rooms. Whilst technically the “unofficial” world championship, it’s the largest (and indeed, the only active) escape room event worldwide, and has grown from strength to strength each year. Since 2017, ER Champ has expanded from being a Polish event under the name “Polish Escape”, to pivoting to a digital edition during the global lockdown, and is now an international event attracting thousands of players.
Photo from the ER Champ Press Pack.
The 2024 finale took place on November 25th in Prague and this year I had the incredible honour of attending in person as the UK Ambassador. To attend, I travelled to Prague and spent the day at the Fun Arena where a special zone was set up to watch the escape rooms being solved live, all whilst meeting and chatting to the organisers and participants. Honestly, sitting in a room talking about my favourite thing with some of the world’s biggest enthusiasts is not a bad way to spend a Monday! And in my case… Well worth waking up at 3.30am to catch the flight to. As I travel back home, I thought we’d write up a little insider post about the event. The who, the what, the when, where and “wow” of 2024’s world escape room championship.
ER Champ 2024 Finalists
This year the finalist teams were:
🇺🇸 6 Keys
🇫🇷 Les Wyrds
🇵🇱 peeposad
🇵🇱 Merkantylizm
🇵🇱 Duże Gumowe Pterodaktyle
🇨🇦 La Compagnie Keyhole
🇹🇼 CKCOS
🇺🇸 Escapinality
🇺🇸 United Discord
🇵🇱 Poziomki i Elo
In this list we saw quite a few returning teams from the previous years, but plenty of new faces too! Sadly no UK teams (*cries in British*), but there’s always next year.
How does the ER Champ Finale work?
The escape rooms of the ER Champ 2024 finale were split into two separate rooms, each lasting under 30 minutes each. This allowed two teams to be competing at once, and facilitated a unique points system based on various milestones achieved by the team members inside both rooms, which could be tabulated alongside the escape time for the leaderboards. In the event that a team does not complete the entire room, the number of completed milestones instead counted towards the score… And of course, no hints were offered!
This year’s rooms were designed by the Polish creative studio “My Cuda Robimy” which translates into “wonders we make”, and were themed, like the qualifiers, around TV. Watching along, it was clear the escape rooms in the competition were the ultimate homage to real-life escape rooms, having a mix of puzzle types you’d see at escape rooms the world over. But one of the most important things was that the focus of these rooms were quite literally “co-operation”, with one of them involving a split-start, where both halves of the team were separated.
From the official explanation:
The storyline of final escape rooms plunged participants into a dystopian world hidden inside a television, where humans—including the competitors—were being abducted. Teams faced a sequence of challenges: entering the hidden world, rescuing trapped individuals, and ultimately destroying the devices responsible for the abductions. This year’s competition introduced a significant shift toward traditional escape room formats while incorporating a milestone-based system. These milestones allowed for more precise ranking of the ten finalist teams, ensuring fair and transparent results.
As each team played, the leaderboards were updated in real time and broadcast to the viewers both in-person, and online.
ER Champ 2024 Winners
The 6 Keys team from the USA were the first to play and they dominated the competition. They were the only ones who have completed both rooms and had a strong time advantage. On second place came team United Discord (also from the USA) and on third Les Wyrds from France.
From left to right, United Discord, 6 Keys and Les Wyrds. Photo from the ER Champ Press Pack.
ER Champ 2024 – Closing Thoughts
I’ve only been playing the Escape Room Championship for 4 years, and been an ambassador for one, but I’ve been so pleased to see how big the event has grown each year. Even though no UK team reached the finale, I felt immensely proud of all teams who took part in the finale. Making it through all the qualifiers is no small feat, and it was clear everyone in the competition were peak puzzle solvers – a joy to watch!
Above everything, the atmosphere of the event was lovely, and I can’t congratulate the organisers enough for putting on such a good event. During the ER Champ, I had a little video interview with two of the organisers talking about the UK escape room industry, and the ER Champ as a whole. That video should be posted on their social media soon – so keep an eye out!
Until next year, all that’s left to say is congratulations 6 Keys, and a big round of applause for the organisers.
If you want to get involved with ER Champ 2025, you can find out more on their website here.
[…] For anyone who doesn’t know, the ER Champ is an annual escape room championship crowning the world’s best escape room players. Since it’s inception, the competition has pivoted from it’s in-person origins in Poland, to a digital event anyone can play from anywhere in the world during lockdown, and now back to an in-person one whose finale moves around multiple European cities. Last year the finale took place in Prague, which you can read all about here. […]