India’s preparation for the Esports Nations Cup is starting to come into view as the country builds out its League of Legends setup for the new national-team event in Riyadh. The clearest reported move so far is the expected appointment of Pankaj “KAKA” Upadhyay as head coach, a decision that would give India a figure tied to the country’s most visible current League roster rather than a name pulled from an older era of the scene.
That reported appointment matters less as a headline on its own and more because of what it says about where India is in the process. The ENC’s League tournament is now fully mapped out, with 32 national teams, a $1.5 million prize pool, direct invites determined by a ranking cut-off on June 14, and regional qualifiers scheduled for June 19 to 21. In other words, this is no longer a loose national-team idea. Countries are already building staffs and trying to lock down structures ahead of a compressed qualification window.
League of Legends is one of the biggest additions to the inaugural ENC, and the official format makes coaching decisions matter immediately. Sixteen nations will qualify directly through the ENC National Team Ranking, with the top eight seeded into the group stage and teams ranked ninth through sixteenth sent to play-ins. Fourteen more teams will qualify through regional online brackets, with two extra wildcards completing the field.
That format puts pressure on countries outside the established global power centers. India is not entering this event as one of the obvious direct-invite favorites, which means the practical challenge is not just selecting five good players. It is building a group that can survive a short qualification run and then hold together in a national-team setting that gives little time for trial and error.
Coaches have a larger role in that kind of event than they often do in domestic play. The ENC is built around temporary national squads, not club systems that have spent a year scrimming together. That makes the coaching job partly tactical and partly administrative, because roster choices, role clarity, and preparation timelines all matter earlier and more sharply than they would in a normal season.
The reporting around KAKA places him inside a wider India setup that is leaning on people already close to active competition. Sheep Esports says he is expected to coach the national team while currently being listed as a substitute for S8UL Esports, the Indian organization whose League lineup has become one of the country’s clearest points of reference over the past year. Liquipedia’s S8UL roster page also lists KAKA among the substitutes added in September 2025.
That link matters because S8UL has been one of the more visible Indian teams in the region’s recent League cycle. The roster is listed on Liquipedia as having reached the LCP 2026 Promotion Wild Card Playoffs, which at least places it inside a competitive pathway tied to the broader Asia-Pacific structure rather than purely local play.
The same reporting also points to S8UL’s 2025 results in Legends Ascend South Asia, a tournament built around India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. Even though the available public records around that event are patchier than they would be for a major regional league, Liquipedia does confirm the tournament’s existence and its place in the South Asian calendar. That gives some weight to the idea that India’s selectors are drawing from people already involved in the country’s recent competitive structure rather than trying to build the national team around pure name value.
This is the real story underneath the coaching report. India’s League of Legends ecosystem does not have the same depth, institutional history, or international results as the countries likely to shape the top end of the ENC field. That means every staffing decision carries more weight, because the margin for wasting time is much smaller.
The reported deadline matters here too. Sheep Esports says KAKA and the other reported India coaches would need to finalize five-player rosters plus two substitutes by the end of April, while also working within a cap that allows no more than three players from the same organization, including substitutes. That kind of rule is important for national-team balance, but it can also complicate selection for developing regions where the player pool is narrower and more concentrated.
For India, then, the question is not simply whether KAKA gets the job officially confirmed. It is whether the staff and player group chosen over the next few weeks can give the country a realistic shot of making it through qualification in a format designed to move quickly and punish weak preparation. The reported appointment makes sense as part of that effort. The harder part comes next, when the roster itself has to prove it can do more than represent India on paper.
