South America would play four "tournaments", a 10-team round robin (2 groups of 5) with a 4-team single elimination playoff bracket, to compete for points for playoffs seeding, with a Trials tournament between each Contenders tournament and Open Division every two Contenders tournaments. Australia would shift to a similar format, with an 8-team round robin (one group) followed by a 4-team double elimination playoff bracket. Korea would move to a 10-team round robin (2 groups of 5) followed by a 6-team single elimination playoff bracket. Europe and North America would shift to five monthly double-elimination tournaments consisting of eight teams, with Trials in between each month and Open Division every two months, preceding the August, September, and November tournaments. The Pacific region was cut, with the Season 1 victors, Talon Esports, receiving a direct invite to Trials Korea. More changes were announced for 2020 Season 2 on June 23rd, 2020.
All subsequent weeks consisted of a 12-team group stage (4 groups of 3) into an 8-team single elimination playoff. China strayed from this format, with their first week consisting of an 8-team single elimination bracket.
Instead of a traditional group stage system, there would be a single-elimination bracket each week, where teams competed for points that would determine playoffs seeding, where the 8 teams with the most points in their region play in a double elimination playoff bracket. In between each week of Contenders, there would be a Trials week to determine who is promoted to Contenders. Every two Contenders weeks, there would be an Open Division season. There would be four weeks of Contenders play per season. North America West and North America East were merged back into one region, North America, reducing the number of regions back to seven. Widespread changes were announced for the 2020 season on October 10th, 2019. All the interregional tournaments were held offline. Regions were split into Atlantic and Pacific, with each hosting a tournament between seasons to determine seeding in The Gauntlet: best performing team won an extra seed for their region, while the worst two teams lost one seed for their region. The Gauntlet, hosted at the end of the year, marked the first global Contenders tournament. Contenders teams will be restricted to a maximum of three non-resident players on their roster. In addition to these changes, Blizzard announced that they would be introducing a "soft region lock" for Contenders 2019. Adjusting the prizing to better reward top teams.
Reducing the number of Seasons from 3 to 2.A number of other changes were also introduced: The number of teams in all regions would be reduced from twelve to eight, and North America would be split into two regions, North America West and North America East, to accomodate OWL academy teams, bringing the number of Contenders tournaments to eight. On October 30th, 2018, Blizzard announced changes to Contenders for the 2019 Season. All Overwatch League teams except for the Los Angeles Valiant, Dallas Fuel and the Seoul Dynasty established Academy teams for the first season of 2018 Contenders, with the Dallas Fuel establishing their Academy team during the second season. The top 4 teams from the previous Open Division season, and the bottom 4 teams from the previous Contenders season, would play in Trials to determine who would play in the next season of Contenders.īeginning in 2018 Season 1 of Contenders, Overwatch League teams were given the opportunity to establish Academy teams to develop talent in Contenders. In addition to expanding to seven regions, the Trials system was introduced, and relegation between Contenders and Open Division was revealed. Contenders began in 2017 in Contenders Season Zero in Europe and North America.Ĭontenders returned for Contenders Season 1 later that year in North America and Europe.īeginning in 2018, Contenders expanded to seven regions:
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