Hello everyone,

At the end of last year we announced we’d be running a CQC tournament in 2016.

In order to run the tournament we wanted to bring in a number of specific features which would allow us to run the event in the way we had planned. However, as you may remember the 2.1 update required a little longer in development as we focused on game improving features that went through the core game play experience and brought our largest Elite Dangerous update to date.

What that means is that we won’t able to run the CQC tournament as we had initially conceived. We will be having a contest with a prize fund at a future date.

For those of you who were excited for a CQC tournament this year, I’m delighted to say that we won’t be leaving you disappointed. We’re very glad to be able to confirm that we will be launching our first ever in game PVP tournament, The Icarus Cup.

This wing vs wing tournament is a place for the Galaxy’s best to prove themselves in a strategically selected and balanced team of medium and small ships. Players will need to assemble themselves into squads of 8 (4 Commanders per match and 4 reserves) so start forming your squads now, ready for when registration opens. The tournament will be open to both Xbox One and PC/Mac players and we will be running two separate tournaments with two separate prizes.

The winners will not only be crowned the most skilled group of PVP pilots in the Galaxy but they will also walk away with an extremely exclusive Icarus Cup Decal and dashboard trophy, which is due to arrive with our 2.3 update.

Take a look at some concepts of the prizes being worked on, remember these are only concepts and could well change, but I’m sure you’ll agree they are truly beautiful. More news on the final rules, structure and how to register will be published in the coming weeks.