Another year. Another Team Fortress 2 World Championship at the summer edition of the Insomnia Gaming Festival in Birmingham? Yes! Team Fortress 2 returns to the NEC at Insomnia63, hosted by Essentials.tf in association with Multiplay! Featuring the best from North America and Europe, i63 will be one of the most jam-packed weekends of TF2 this year!
Format
The tournament is split into a group stage and a playoffs stage, with the group stage containing both an Open and an Invite group.
The open group will feature dozens of teams from across Europe, from open to premiership, duking it out for a chance at one of the eight remaining slots in the i63 Playoffs stage. The teams will play in a single group, with matches being determined through a swiss system. The top eight teams at the end of the group will proceed to the playoffs.
The invite group features five invited teams, as well as three teams from an online invite qualifier. The eight teams will fight in a best-of-one round-robin, similar to the open stage. However, unlike the open group, all teams in the invite group will proceed to the playoffs bracket.
The playoffs stage will be played out in a double-elimination bracket, with teams from both the invite group and the open group competing. All matches will be played in a best-of-three series, barring the grand finals, which will be played in a best-of-five with the upper bracket team taking a default map.
As the event takes place in Europe, the event will use a European ruleset, with a golden cap round used as a tiebreaker that is limited to 15 minutes. If the golden cap timer runs out and no team caps all the points, the team that hold the middle point at the time is awarded the win. Each match is limited to 30 minutes and win limit is set to 5 rounds.
The Toornament page can be found here.
Map Pool
The map pool for Insomnia63 will be as follows:
- cp_process_final
- cp_gullywash_final1
- cp_snakewater_final1
- cp_granary_pro_rc8
- cp_prolands_b5
- cp_sunshine
- koth_product_rc9
Teams
The following teams will participate in the Invite group of the event.
- Ascent.EU - Invited
- Faint Gaming EU - Invited
- froyotech - Invited
- Se7en - Invited
- SVIFT - Invited
- Ora Elektro - Qualified
- Timed_out - Qualified
- The Bus Crew - Qualified
Be sure to check out our Invite group team preview for more information.
Prize Pool
The prize pool for the 6v6 tournament is £7,500. The prize pool will be split as follows:
- 1st: £4,000
- 2nd: £2,000
- 3rd: £1,000
- 4th: £500
Schedule
All times are in BST.
Group Stage
Friday, August 24th
- 1:45 PM | Invite Group Round 1
- 2:45 PM | Invite Group Round 2
- 3:45 PM | Invite Group Round 3
- 4:45 PM | Invite Group Round 4
- 6:45 PM | Invite Group Round 5
- 7:45 PM | Invite Group Round 6
- 8:45 PM | Invite Group Round 7
Main Event
Friday, August 24th
- 10:15 PM | Upper Bracket Round 1
Saturday, August 25th
- 11:00 AM | Upper Bracket Round 2, Lower Bracket Round 1
- 2:00 PM | Upper Bracket Round 3, Lower Bracket Round 2
- 4:15 PM | Lower Bracket Round 3
- 6:30 PM | Upper Bracket Round 4, Lower Bracket Round 4
- 8:45 PM | Lower Bracket Round 5
Sunday, August 26th
- 4:45 PM | Lower Bracket Final
- 8:00 PM | Grand Final
Broadcast
The following talent will be covering the event:
- TurboTabs - Host/Commentator
- GrumpyKoi - Host/Commentator
- Kermit - Commentator
- WARHURYEAH - Commentator
- Plunk - Commentator
- DuMmTm - Commentator
- eepily - Commentator
- gemm - Observer
- Sim - Observer
- ArchRhythm - Producer
- Dan - Producer
- Jon - Producer
Insomnia63 will be broadcasted live on Essentials.TF's Twitch channel.