The Virtual Bundesliga (VBL) celebrates its tenth anniversary this year: The VBL Open, part of the VBL competition, first started in 2012 in cooperation with the German Football League (DFL). To this day, it is the only EA SPORTS FIFA game directly integrated into competition of a professional football league. Now over 130,000 people from across Germany take part. All matches are played on the football simulation game FIFA 22 on the newest console generation, PlayStation 5 plus Xbox Series S/X.
The VBL Club Championship, the second competition in the VBL, is in its fourth season. Bayer 04, with its eSports team is one of the founders of this league. Participation in the VBL CC is open to all 36 German professional clubs and 26 teams from the top two football leagues have confirmed their participation this year. The only changes in composition are related to league status: The new second division clubs Hansa Rostock and FC Ingolstadt replace the relegated Würzburg Kickers and Eintracht Braunschweig.
"We very much welcome the commitment and the efforts of the DFL in the area of eSports and we are looking forward to being in the fourth year of the VBL Club Championship," explained Florian Dederichs, the head of eSports and internationalisation at Bayer 04. "With our new and deeper squad, we want to be more unpredictable for our opponents and build on the successful past seasons."
Fabian ‘B04_DUBZJE’ De Cae, Marc ‘MARC_LDW23’ Landwehr and Anna ‘B04_ANNA’ Klink are joined for the new VBL season by new signings Paul ‘B04_Paul’ Degner plus Furkan ‘FURKY’ Kayacik.
At the end of March next year, as part of the VBL Club Championship, the German club championship will be decided. In the VBL Grand Final at the start of June 2020 there will also be a champion of all participating individual players from the VBL Open and VBL CC competitions.
Bayer 04 have agreed a loan move for U19s striker Ken Izekor to join Bundesliga 2 club Eintracht Braunschweig on loan for the rest of the 2025/26 season.
Show more
Bayer 04 have agreed a loan deal for Jeanuel Belocian to join fellow Bundesliga club Wolfsburg on loan until the end of the season. The 20-year-old defender’s contract in Leverkusen runs until 30 June 2029.
Show more
After Leverkusen's eSports team spectacularly won the first showdown in the history of the VBL Club Championship last year, two rather sobering editions followed with two early exits. Now, in Showdown Four, cousins Marc and Sean Landwehr have once again made it into the offline knockout phase. And in this phase, Bochum awaits on Monday, 2 February (live on the VBL's Twitch channel from 16:00 CET). Here's a look at their opponents and what might happen next.
Show more
SAB-P GmbH is to become Bayer 04 Leverkusen's first official inclusion partner. The company, which has previously been involved in the club's Business Club, is underlining its social commitment to inclusion with an agreement that runs until 31 May 2027. Among other things, it will be the shirt sponsor of the Inclusion Team from the 2026/27 season onwards.
Show more
The Werkself were impressive in the 3-1 win against Eintracht Frankfurt with clinical finishing and a first half "at a high level" that head coach Kasper Hjulmand draws a lot of positives from. The same should apply to Arthur, who scored for the first time in the Bundesliga. Edmond Tapsoba, for his part, was happy about his 250th appearance in a Bayer 04 jersey. "I think we're slowly finding our feet again," said goalscorer Malik Tillman, summing up the performance. The Werkself review.
Show more
