Blizzard announced in March that the Overwatch World Cup will return in 2018, giving South Korea a chance to defend its title for a third year. The tournament will take place in November in Southern California.
Qualification for the international showdown began in March. Blizzard tracked average skill rating for each country’s top 150 players from the time of the announcement until the end of season nine (April 28). Now, 20 countries have been selected to participate in the event.
24 countries, 4 Group Stages.
Vote for your 2018 World Cup committee members today!
?? https://t.co/9XGCrVbR8I pic.twitter.com/6H1RZEYog5
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) May 2, 2018
South Korea, the United States, Thailand and France are host countries for the Overwatch World Cup 2018 and, therefore, automatically qualified. The 24 countries are broken up into four groups. Two teams from each group will move on to the top eight semifinals, which will take place in November. Here are the groups, listed by their competition location.
France
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Poland
- United Kingdom
South Korea
- Finland
- Hong Kong
- Japan
- Russia
- South Korea
- Taiwan
Thailand
- Australia
- China
- Denmark
- Spain
- Sweden
- Thailand
United States
- Austria
- Brazil
- Canada
- Norway
- Switzerland
- United States
There have been a few changes to how the qualified countries’ National Competition Committees are formed. Each committee will consist of three people: a General Manager, a coach and a community lead. Full National Competition Committees will be revealed at the end of this month.
- General Manager: GMs will be selected by Blizzard, though applications will be accepted.
- Coach:
- Phase 1: Any player with an account in good standing can apply to their national team’s coach position and will be provided with a custom URL so that they can receive endorsements. During this phase, players can endorse as many candidates as their hearts desire.
- Phase 2: Blizzard will reveal the top three candidates per country and hold a runoff vote among the top 150 players (by SR) from the candidates’ country of residence. In this phase, each player can only vote once.
- Community Lead:
- Phase 1: This process will be the same as the coach process.
- Phase 2: Blizzard will reveal each country’s top 10 candidates and all players from the candidates’ country can cast one final vote.
Blizzard will pay committee members for their time, with travel and accommodations included. Team tryouts, which are also open to Overwatch League members, will be held from June 1 to July 5. Committees will submit rosters of up to 12 players from June 15 to July 5, but only seven players from each roster will travel to live events.
More information about the event is expected after Phase 1 voting. In the meantime, hit that Competitive Play card and fight for your country!