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Candy Crush All Stars crowned its 2026 Champion. Luana from Brazil emerged victorious, amongst millions of players worldwide who competed for a coveted spot in the Live Final One of the biggest All Stars Live Final yet brought together finalists from the United States, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and beyond, in London to compete on stage for a share of the $1 million prize pool and a custom Icebox championship ring A brand-new bonus round added an extra layer of excitement to the Live Final, with one player winning an additional $10,000 in the tournament's fastest-paced challenge yet , /PRNewswire/ -- What started on a phone screen ended on a live stage in London. Candy Crush All Stars has crowned its 2026 Champion. Luana from Bahia, Brazil claimed the title in the Live Final, after competing against millions of players from across the globe, emerging victorious at the tournament's biggest-ever Live Final in London.

Luana from Brazil is Named Candy Crush’s 2026 All Stars Champion

Custom Candy Crush All Stars 2026 championship ring created by Icebox

All Stars 2026 Finalists Competing at their chance to win this year's tournament She takes home a share of $1 million and a custom Candy Crush-inspired championship ring from Icebox, a multicoloured showpiece set with sapphires, rubies, emeralds and pink sapphires crafted into the game's most iconic shapes, from Colorbombs and clusters to red Candies brought to life in stone. At its centre, a spinning blue Wrapped Candy dome that's as playful as the game itself, with the Candy Crush Saga name etched in gold along the band. Luana barely waited for the moment to sink in before she had the ring on her finger, a one-of-a-kind piece designed just for this moment and for the player who earned it.

The Live Final marked a major evolution for the competition, transforming what began as everyday mobile play into a full-scale live spectacle. Finalists from the United States, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and beyond, competed on stage in front of fans, family, and media. For the first time, the Live Final introduced a bonus round - a fast-paced, high-intensity challenge that pushed players to their limits in a way the competition has never seen before - with the winner of that bonus round walking away with an additional $10,000.

The Live Final brought together an extraordinary group of competitors, reflecting the scale and diversity of the Candy Crush community. Players travelled from across the globe to compete in London, including Ingrid and German, a husband and wife duo from California's Bay Area, who both advanced to the final stage of the tournament independently, turns out two of the world's best Candy Crush players have been sharing a household all along.

After weeks of competition spanning 25 countries and millions of other Candy Crush players to secure a spot at the Live Final, Luana, an art student from Bahia, Brazil, ultimately claimed the championship title in the Live Final, becoming the Candy Crush All Stars 2026 Champion.

"I started playing Candy Crush a while back, it was just something I loved to do, a game that always made small moments fun. I never imagined it would one day take me to a live stage in London to compete against the best players in the world. To come home as the Candy Crush All Stars 2026 Champion is something I will carry with me. I am so incredibly proud," said Luana, Candy Crush All Stars 2026 Champion.

"At King, we've always believed that casual games can create moments of real skill, connection and joy at a huge scale. All Stars brings that to life in a way that only Candy Crush can. Seeing the finalists bring their passion and talent to a live stage in London to compete at such a high level is a powerful reminder of what makes our community so special. This tournament was built for our players, and they continue to surprise and inspire us," said Todd Green, President at King.

With millions of players competing worldwide for a spot in the All Stars Live Final, and the Live Final returning to London at its most ambitious scale yet, Candy Crush continues to demonstrate the enduring appeal of shared play on a global scale. More than a decade after launch, the game remains one of the world's most-loved mobile entertainment experiences, bringing joy to millions of players every day.

Candy Crush Saga® is free to download on iOS and Android. For more information, visit candycrushsaga.com.

*Candy Crush All Stars Tournament was held in London in 2021 on an intimate scale.

About Candy Crush Saga
Candy Crush Saga® is one of the world's most popular mobile games. Millions of players around the globe match colorful candies in combinations of three or more to win points, defeat obstacles, and progress through more than 20,000 levels. In November 2022, Candy Crush Saga celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Candy Crush Saga is available to download for free from the Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon App Store, Windows App Store and Facebook.

About King
With a mission of Making the World Playful, King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world with more than 20 years of history of delivering some of the world's most iconic games in the mobile gaming industry, including the world-famous Candy Crush franchise, as well as other mobile titles such as Farm Heroes Saga. King games are played by more than 200 million monthly active users. King, part of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), has Kingsters in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Malta. More information can be found at King.com or by following us on LinkedIn, @lifeatking on Instagram.

© Deemerwha studio / Shutterstock.com

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is the default core holding for tens of millions of investors. It tracks the S&P 500, charges 0.0945% in expenses, pays a 1.25% dividend yield, and has returned about 314% over the past decade on a price basis. The pitch is simple: own the 500 largest U.S. companies for almost nothing and let market-cap weighting work.

Two funds run a different rule on the same names. The Invesco S&P 500 Quality ETF (NYSEARCA:SPHQ) and the iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF (NYSEARCA:QUAL) keep only the companies that score well on financial strength, the so-called “S&P 500 minus the junk.” The surprise is what that screen has not done: beat the index over ten years. It offers a different exposure, not a higher return.

What SPY Actually Holds SPY weights its roughly 505 holdings by market capitalization, which concentrates the fund at the top and forces it to carry the bottom regardless of fundamentals. NVIDIA at 7.8%, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) at 6.8%, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) at 4.7% make up nearly a fifth of the fund, and Information Technology is 37% of it. The tail behind them includes companies with negative free cash flow, weak returns on equity, and high leverage. SPY owns them by market value, not financial health. That is the gap a quality screen tries to close.

The Quality Screen, and What It Actually Returned SPHQ starts with the same S&P 500 universe and keeps only the 100 names that score best on return on equity, accruals, and financial leverage. QUAL applies similar logic across a broader large- and mid-cap universe, screening within each sector to stay roughly sector-neutral.

The numbers are the catch. Over the past ten years, SPY returned about 314%, or 15.49% a year. SPHQ returned about 302%, or 14.91% a year. QUAL returned about 14.27% a year, the lowest of the three. Both quality funds tracked the index closely, and both finished a step behind it. Removing the weakest names did not add return over this stretch. It roughly matched the index while tilting toward financial strength.

So Why Own It The case for a quality screen is not a higher ten-year number. It is the exposure. These funds concentrate capital in companies with durable returns on capital and clean balance sheets, which tend to hold up better when the earnings cycle turns and weaker businesses get punished. That edge stayed hidden in a decade-long bull market that rewarded almost everything.

There is also a live signal. So far in 2026, SPHQ has pulled ahead of SPY, 13.21% against the index’s 9.64% year to date. One stretch is not a trend, but it is the choppier, more selective market where a quality tilt is meant to earn its keep.

The Tradeoffs to Weigh The swap is not free. SPHQ and QUAL both charge 0.15% against SPY’s 0.0945%, a gap of about 5.5 basis points, or roughly $55 a year on $100,000. The income is lower too: QUAL yields 0.86% against SPY’s 1.25%, a small haircut for anyone leaning on the portfolio for cash.

They also run more concentrated and pricier. QUAL holds about 44% of its weight in its top ten names and trades near a 28 P/E. That premium drives the strategy in good times and drags when the market rotates toward cheaper, beaten-down names. And do not assume lower risk: over the past decade SPHQ actually ran higher volatility than SPY, so a quality label is not a safety guarantee.

How to Make the Swap In a tax-advantaged account, the switch is mechanical: sell SPY, buy SPHQ or QUAL, zero tax cost. In a taxable account, the math changes. An investor who bought SPY in 2016 sits on roughly 314% of embedded gain, and a full sale realizes long-term capital gains on all of it. The cleaner path is to stop adding to SPY, route new contributions to the quality fund, and swap inside an IRA first if you hold SPY in both account types.

Where This Leaves the Decision SPY remains the cheapest, deepest, most liquid way to own the S&P 500, and over the last ten years it also delivered the higher return. A quality screen did not beat it; it tracked the index while tilting toward stronger balance sheets. That makes SPHQ or QUAL a reasonable choice for an investor who wants a quality factor and believes it pays off in a more selective market, not for one expecting a bigger ten-year number. SPHQ is the closer analog to a cleaned-up SPY and is leading in 2026; QUAL is the sector-balanced version. For most investors who simply want the index, SPY is hard to beat.

Tech stocks are selling off amid renewed artificial-intelligence spending concerns, Microsoft included.

by Todd Bishop on Jun 12, 2026 at 2:15 pmJune 12, 2026 at 3:36 pm

Microsoft has spent years subsidizing Xbox rather than profiting from it, CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged this week, as he addressed the gaming division’s need for a new approach. 

His comments came during a Wednesday evening taping of The New York Times’ “Hard Fork” podcast, released Friday. Hosts Kevin Roose and Casey Newton pressed Nadella on the future of Xbox a few hours after the division’s leadership signaled an upcoming reset.

“No one can accuse Microsoft of not having invested for the last 25 years,” Nadella said of the Xbox and games business. “And now we have to turn this into a sustainable business.” 

For all the entertainment value Xbox provides, he said, Microsoft hasn’t been monetizing that entertainment, and has actually been subsidizing it. He added with a chuckle, “In fact, there’s more monetization of Xbox games happening on YouTube than at Microsoft.”

Earlier in the day, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma had told employees in a memo that the division’s heavy spending and declining revenue cannot continue. Sharma, about 100 days into the job, said Xbox will finish the fiscal year at roughly a 3% margin by an internal Microsoft measure, after the company spent more than $20 billion over five years even as annual revenue fell.

Bloomberg News reported that the division is planning major job cuts next month. 

On the podcast, Nadella described two pressures on the business. One is temporary: a run-up in prices driven by the shortage of semiconductors and memory, which is squeezing PCs, phones and other consumer electronics, and which he said Microsoft will get through. 

The other is lasting — the question of what the Xbox business model should be going forward. 

“I think we have to find ways to deliver the games in which it’s economically relevant for the customer and for us,” Nadella said when Newton asked whether he could offer any sort of “carrot” for gamers, or whether consoles and games would simply get more expensive. 

Nadella didn’t detail what the new model would look like. Sharma said in her memo that she’ll spend the next 100 days taking what she called a fresh look at the business.

The Information reported Friday that Microsoft hasn’t ruled out restructuring Xbox — potentially as a wholly owned subsidiary, a joint venture, or a spin-off — though it has no imminent plans to do so. The outlet, citing three people with direct knowledge, said Sharma plans to pair layoffs with heavier investment in big franchises like Halo and Fallout, a plan Nadella and CFO Amy Hood have signed off on.

See above for the full conversation, which otherwise focuses largely on artificial intelligence, including the AI backlash over data centers, AI’s impact on jobs, whether the U.S. government should take stakes in AI companies, and how much he buys the idea that AI is about to automate entire jobs.