Weltrade, the retail brokerage celebrating its 20th year in business, has launched the SYNTX World Cup 2026 — a global trading championship offering a prize fund of $100,000 in cash plus 100 million Welcoins, with no entry fee for any participant.

The tournament centers on SyntX, a family of volatility-based synthetic instruments available exclusively on the Weltrade terminal. Unlike currency pairs or commodity CFDs, synthetic indices are generated continuously and are unaffected by news cycles, central-bank decisions, or market opening hours. Synthetic instruments of this kind have grown into a significant segment of retail trading in recent years, particularly in emerging markets where access to conventional exchange hours can be limited. According to the company, this creates a level playing field: every competitor trades the same instrument set, around the clock, over the same number of trading days.

Each entrant trades a virtual account funded with $10,000 in demo capital. Nothing is deposited and nothing can be lost. The leaderboard is scored on a single metric — percentage return, calculated as (final balance − starting balance) ÷ starting balance. Weltrade emphasizes the reasoning behind this design: a contest that rewards trading skill should not require participants to risk their savings to demonstrate it. Free-entry demo competitions are an established client-acquisition tool among retail brokers, and the regional quotas here signal where the firm sees its growth markets.

The competition unfolds in two stages. A regional Qualification Round runs from 31 August to 6 September across four zones, with advancement quotas weighted to each region's trading population: the top 900 traders in Africa, 600 in LATAM, 300 in Asia & Oceania, and 200 from the rest of the world. Those who advance move on to a single Grand Final, where 400 finalists compete for one trophy.

The prize structure extends well beyond the podium. The World Champion receives $20,000, and all top 50 finishers earn cash prizes. A series of side nominations — Best New Synthetics Trader ($2,500), along with Most Active Trader, Best Comeback, Newcomer of the Cup, Longest Winning Streak, and Prediction Champion ($500 each) — is designed to reward participation patterns rather than raw account size. A parallel Prediction Game, played in Welcoins, allows spectators to compete alongside the traders. Introducing brokers are also included, with up to $2,500 available for top qualifying and top performing partners, plus a 10% commission on referred traders' winnings.

Automated strategies and Expert Advisors are explicitly permitted — an unusual choice for a broker-run contest — turning the event into a live comparison of discretionary and algorithmic approaches on identical instruments. Latency arbitrage and other manipulation tactics result in disqualification, and the Grand Final can be followed live on the contest site. Traders watching the leaderboard will be able to judge for themselves how algorithmic strategies stack up against manual ones under identical conditions.

Registration and the full rulebook are available at .