The 2020 Arena World Championship is Changing

April 14th by Blizzard Entertainment

To help protect the health and safety of players, staff, and partners, the 2020 Arena World Championship (AWC) Battle for Azeroth season will be held entirely online.

This program was originally planned to culminate in a multi-region LAN tournament this summer. Unfortunately, with this move to online-only play, this kind of international tournament cannot be hosted due to differences in regional server ping.

We are determined, however, to make our online events awesome for everyone. To that end, we will be making format changes to our originally scheduled tournaments to ensure that we get our fix of incredible PvP action while competitive integrity is maintained.

The new AWC Battle for Azeroth season will consist of three major stages.

  • The AWC Cups – There will be eight open-registration online tournaments, four in North America (including ANZ and LatAm) and four in Europe, with a prize pool of USD $10,000 each. From May 22 through June 14, teams will compete for AWC points which determine the top eight teams in both Europe and North America, each of which will earn invites to compete in the AWC Circuit. Signups are currently open!
  • The AWC Circuit - The top eight teams will be invited to compete in a round-robin tournament for their respective region, with a guaranteed prize for qualifying and participating. Each team will play against every other team once in a best-of-five series, awarding one point to each winning team. These matches will be played over four weekends—we’ll let you know those dates when we get closer.
  • Finals -The top four teams from each region will be seeded into two double-elimination groups, where they will battle through the final weekend of the AWC Battle for Azeroth Season. Only two teams will come out on top, each in their respective region to be crowned the regional champions of Battle for Azeroth and earning the lion’s share of the prize pool.

Speaking of prize pools, the Arena World Championship Battle for Azeroth LAN Finals was originally equipped with a USD $500,000 prize pool. With these changes, we will be splitting this prize pool to the new regional North American and European Circuit and Finals.

The total prize pool for this phase will remain the same with this move to online-only and will be split between NA/EU equally (USD $250k per region).

  • USD $150k each to the NA and EU Circuits
  • USD $100k for each Finals

The World of Warcraft esports team is working hard to bring you all the AWC action through remote online broadcasts for the remainder of Battle for Azeroth. Please refer to the official rules for further details on the prize pool distribution and other information about AWC. Stay connected and on top of the latest news by following us on YouTube and Twitter, and be sure to sign up for the AWC. Good luck, have fun!

Join the discussion on the 2020 Arena World Championship on the forums.