Challenger League Returns

As the Pro League season resumes Tuesday, the 8th season of Challenger League will also begin. This season, Challenger League will begin a brand-new format featuring 8 teams from the NA, LATAM and EU regions which will run over the next two months as teams battle it out for a spot in the playoffs.

The new format features a tournament system, similar to Pro League, in which every team will compete in a double round robin group where they will play a match against every team in the league, twice. Rather than splitting the season in two, the new format features teams playing two BO1 (best of one) matches in a row against the same opponent. This means every play day will feature eight matches, with two played at the same time.

After the group stage, the four best teams will advance to a playoff tournament where teams will play a single elimination BO3 bracket. The biggest change this season is the new automatic promotion which will see the winner of the Challenger League tournament automatically be promoted into Pro League while the 8th place Pro League team gets relegated to Challenger League. The runner up in the Challenger League tournament will then play the 7th place Pro League team for a spot in the next seasons Pro League.

The Challenger League teams feature some strong competition like the Y2S3 Lan winners ENCE eSports, the Disrupt Gaming hopefuls that made it to the US Nationals Stage 1 Finals and the recently picked up Russian squad of Team Empire that narrowly missed qualifying for the Paris Major.

The games will be played on Tuesday evenings for EU and Thursday evenings for NA and will be casted by community streamers with following teams taking part: