With the Overwatch League set to kick off its inaugural season one of the big questions has been, 'what does that mean for the current state of competitive Overwatch?' Well, in addition to name changes, a restructuring that makes sense with the ultimate goal for teams and players being a path to the professional Overwatch League.

It's not complicated, but the below video does a good job of breaking it down.



Okay, so here goes my attempt. Overwatch Contenders will be the new home of regional seasonal play, where our own Overwatch Pacific Championship will become Contenders Pacific. And sometime after that a specific Australian (Australia and New Zealand) Contenders league.

At a minimum, the top six teams from existing tournaments will be invited to join their region’s Contenders for 2018. The new Contenders regions, Australia and South America, will hold open qualifier tournaments to determine entry. Contenders will not be region-locked, although online matches will be played on each region’s server. As with the Overwatch League, it’s important for us to have the best players in the world competing at every level of competition.

The hierarchy of how it all work is straight-forward. The in-game Overwatch Open Division will continue, broken into the same regions as Contenders. There the pathway will be open for players and teams to compete both locally, regionally, and then hopefully one day make it to the Overwatch League.

Australian region Overwatch teams in the Open Division will be invited to compete in Contenders Trials in February.