The sixth annual Call of Duty World League Championship is set to begin tomorrow and will span from August 15-19. The group stages of the competition will take place at the MLG Arena in Columbus, Ohio, while the championship bracket will be held at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus. The teams will be battling it out on Call of Duty: World War II for a prize pool worth $1,500,000 USD.

There will be 32 teams competing to be crowned Call of Duty World League Champion, which includes some of the biggest esports teams in the world like FaZe Clan, OpTic Gaming, Luminosity Gaming, and Echo Fox. The 32 teams are comprised of 12 teams from the Stage 1 of the CWL Global Pro League, four teams from Relegation of the CWL Pro League and the last 16 teams are from Last Chance Qualifiers.

The tournament is broken up into two parts, the group stage, and the knockout stage. The group stage runs from August 15-16th. The 32 teams are broken up into 8 round-robin groups with four teams each. All the matches will be best-of-five and the top two teams of the group advance to the knockout stage. The knockouts run from August 17-19 and will be a double-elimination bracket. All the matches in the knockout stage are best-of-five. The grand finals of the tournament will be a best-of-five series with the team from the winner’s bracket only needing to win once, while the team from the loser’s bracket is needing to win twice.

The Participants & Groups

Shown below are the 32 teams participating in the 2018 Call of Duty World League Championships. Also, are the groups that the teams will be battling out in. Group E will be considered the “group of death” because of the firepower from FaZe Clan, compLexity gaming, but also because of Enigma6 and Morituri Esports success in the last chance qualifiers. Another group to watch will be Group G with Echo Fox, Luminosity Gaming, Team Vitality, and Havok Esports.

Call of Duty World League Championship Legends

It wouldn’t be right to write an article about the Call of Duty World League Championship without mentioning a few of the most successful Call of Duty players in this tournament. They are Crimsix, Scump, FormaL, and JKap. One of these four have at least won the Call of Duty World League Championship since 2014, and 2013 being the only year so far where one hasn’t won the tournament.

Crimsix and Scump are paired together on OpTic Gaming alongside Methodz and Octane. Crimsix is the highest earning and all-time winningest player in Call of Duty history. He is a reigning 2017 Call of Duty World League Champion and took home the 2014 Call of Duty Championship with compLexity gaming. Scump won the CoD World League Championship in 2017 with Crimsix, while also placing third at the 2013 and 2014 championships.

Similar to Crimsix and Scump, FormaL and JKap are on the same team at the tournament. FormaL and JKap are apart of Luminosity gaming alongside with Slacked and John. JKap won back-to-back championships in 2015 and 2016, while FormaL picked up his first championship with Scump and Crimsix in 2017.

Will they make it five years in a row where one of these four win the Call of Duty World League Championship? We will find out this weekend, but history is on their side. They’ve been in this situation before and know what it takes to bring home the championship.