What’s up World Warriors! We know you’ve all been deep in the lab, practicing Street Fighter V Season 2 and we’re hype to share all the Capcom Pro Tour 2017 details with you today!

Outside of a huge prize pool boost -- over $600,000 is on the line this year thanks to our friends at Twitch -- we’ve made many other changes to the tour to help streamline the Capcom Cup qualification process, while still providing plenty of opportunities to players all over the world.

Check out all the details below and be sure to follow @CapcomFighters on Twitter for the latest updates on all things Capcom Pro Tour.

How to Qualify for Capcom Cup 2017

First things first: how to qualify for Capcom Cup 2017! Just like previous years, Capcom Cup will feature 32 of the best Street Fighter players from all over the globe who secure their spot by competing in Capcom Pro Tour events throughout the year. This year, we wanted the qualification process to be much easier to follow for both players and fans alike. We want the focus of the Capcom Pro Tour to be on our amazing community of players and incredible matches rather than complex rulesets and qualification processes.

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Below are the ways that players can qualify for Capcom Cup 2017.

Capcom Cup 2016 Champion Returns to Defend his Title

Current Capcom Cup champion NuckleDu will be the first player to qualify for Capcom Cup 2017 and will have a chance to defend his title later this year. This qualification process was present during the years when Street Fighter IV was the flagship title of the CPT and we’re happy to bring it back in Season 2 of Street Fighter V.

While previous year’s champions will now auto-qualify for Capcom Cup, they will still have to compete throughout the year for top seed at the finals and to get their share of cash prizing that’s distributed amongst all the Premier Events and Regional Finals.

Win the Capcom Cup 2017 Last Chance Qualifier

As announced at last year’s Capcom Cup, we’ll be holding a Last Chance Qualifier at Capcom Cup 2017 that will be open to anyone who wants to compete. The winner of this tournament will be the last player to qualify for Capcom Cup 2017.

Our goal moving forward is to have Capcom Cup be an event for all players from all over the world, not just those who qualified for the event. We feel that having an open qualifier will bring the community together one last time before the season ends and of course, generate unthinkable amounts of hype before the finals!

Rise Up! Top 30 of the Capcom Pro Tour Global Leaderboards Qualify for Capcom Cup 2017

Players who compete in Capcom Pro Tour Ranking and Global Premier Events will gain points towards their Global Leaderboard standing. At the end of the year, we’ll be taking the top 30 players to fill out the remaining spots in Capcom Cup 2017.

We want players and fans to easily be able to see who is in the running for Capcom Cup at any time by simply going to the Capcom Pro Tour leaderboards right here on this website. The root of much of the confusion around who was qualified for Capcom Cup in previous years came from the auto-qualification system. This new method of qualifying players through points will eliminate the need for complex breakdowns of which players are in and which players out. Beyond that, we’ve smoothed out the point distribution to better reward players who place based on the events they attend and participate in. We’ve also expanded the amount of players who are eligible for Capcom Pro Tour points.

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The goal here is to have more logical weighting around events both through the amount of points rewarded and the amount of players the points are distributed to. We understand there is a big difference between getting top 32 at EVO and top 8 at a Ranking Event and want this to be reflected in the amount of points gained through placing at various tournaments.

Capcom Pro Tour Event Season



Premier Events Structure

Premier Events no longer grant auto-qualification into Capcom Cup. Winners of Premier Events will now be rewarded with a tremendous amount of Capcom Pro Tour points to help them secure their spot in the Top 30 on the Capcom Pro Tour Global Leaderboards -- effectively replacing the auto-qualification process.

As mentioned above, we felt the auto-qualification process in previous years resulted in unnecessary layers of complexity. That said, we still want to reward winners of Premier Events and take steps to ensure they qualify for Capcom Cup at the end of the year.

Ranking Events Structure

This year, the Ranking Event season will take place between April and September, featuring high-quality tournaments from all over the world. Players in each region will compete in these tournaments to gain points towards their Regional Leaderboard standing.

Once the Ranking Event season concludes, the Top 7 players from each Regional Leaderboard will qualify for their respective Regional Finals.

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Regional Finals Structure

Much like last year, Regional Finals will be two day events that consist of a Last Chance Qualifier on Day 1 where the winner will move onto Day 2, filling out the 8 person bracket. Last Chance Qualifiers at Regional Finals are now region locked, meaning players who do not reside in that region will be unable to compete.

While last year’s Regional Finals were nothing short of amazing in terms of gameplay, we felt we could do more to truly highlight the talent from each region. The events ended up effectively being last chance qualifiers for all regions, and that is something we want to avoid this year. With points being awarded to players only from that region and the last chance qualifier being region locked, we will be able to truly see who the best player from each region is.

As mentioned previously, Regional Finals now have $30,000 up for grabs, which will be distributed among the Top 8 from the Day 2 finals. The winner of each Regional Final will receive 400 Capcom Pro Tour points to help their seeding in Capcom Cup 2017, $12,000 in cash prizes and other rewards, which we will reveal at a later date!

Note: Regional Finals will grant an auto-qualification spot into Capcom Cup 2017 under all circumstances. If the player who wins is still not in the Top 30 of the Global Leaderboards after the 400-point boost, the qualified list of players from the Global Leaderboards will be reduced by one, moving the bottom player out of contention.



Online Events Update

We will be expanding the amount of Online Ranking Events this season to a total of four per region. Additionally, Online Ranking Events will be segmented per region based on proximity. We want players to have the best possible experience during online events and want to avoid subpar connections due to player location.

We were very happy with how well the Online Events went last year, but we also came away with many key learnings and want to make this year’s online circuit the best yet. We also want to make sure that our entire player base has a chance to compete in the Capcom Pro Tour even if they are unable to travel to live events. We’ll be removing the registration cap on these events to make sure everyone can see if they have what it takes to be the champ.

Capcom Cup 2017 Format

While we can’t share all of the details at this point, we’ve taken feedback from previous Capcom Cups and decided we will be moving to a group stage format for the event. This will allow the tournament to be less taxing both to players and staff, while still ensuring the event is the optimal viewing experience for spectators. We’ll reveal more about how this will work, along with other exciting details, later in the year!

Tournament Schedule

Below is a list of events currently confirmed for the 2017 Season of the Capcom Pro Tour. We’ll have announcements on other tournaments such as additional Ranking Events, Regional Finals and Online Ranking Events in the coming months.

Please see each event's website or social media accounts for venue locations, dates and additional information.

EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION 2017 - Las Vegas, NV

GLOBAL PREMIER EVENTS

FINAL ROUND 20 - Atlanta, GA

ULTIMATE FIGHTING ARENA - Paris, France

NORCAL REGIONALS 2017 - Sacramento, CA

BATTLE ARENA MELBOURNE - Melbourne, Australia

DREAMHACK AUSTIN - Austin, TX

COMBO BREAKER 2017 - Chicago, IL

COMMUNITY EFFORT ORLANDO 2017 - Orlando, FL

DREAMHACK SUMMER - Jonkoping, Sweden

ESPORTS FESTIVAL HONG KONG - Hong Kong

SOCAL REGIONALS 2017 - Los Angeles, CA

EGX - Birmingham, England

TW FIGHTER - Taipei, Taiwan

CANADA CUP 2017 - Toronto, Canada

JAPAN CUP 2017 - TBD

CHINA PREMIER EVENT - Chengdu, China

CPT NA

WEST COAST WARZONE - Los Angeles, CA

TEXAS SHOWDOWN - Houston, TX

TORYUKEN - Toronto, Canada

DEFEND THE NORTH - White Plains, NY

SUMMER JAM - Philadelphia, PA

ABSOLUTE BATTLE 8 - Dallas, TX

EAST COAST THROWDOWN - New Jersey

DREAMHACK MONTREAL - Montreal, Canada

NORTH WEST MAJORS - Des Moines, WA

CPT ASIA

SAIGON CUP - Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

ABUGET CUP - Jakarta, Indonesia

MANILA CUP - Manila, Philippines

OZHADOU NATIONALS 15 - Sydney, Australia

FV CUP 2017 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

CPT EU

SONIC BOOM - Madrid, Spain

HYPESPOTTING VI - Glasgow, Scotland

THE COLOSSEUM - Rome, Italy

FFM RUMBLE 10 - Frankfurt, Germany

FIGHT CLUB NRW 8 - Cologne, Germany

VS FIGHTING 7 - Birmingham, Englad

NORWAY RANKING EVENT TBD - Oslo, Norway

CELTIC THROWDOWN - Dublin, Ireland

STREET GRAND BATTLE - Lyon, France

DUBAI EVENT TBD - Dubai, UAE

CPT LATAM

GAM - Dominican Republic

THE FIGHT - Columbia

FIGHT IN RIO - Rio, Brazil

FURIA TICA - Costa Rica

UNION ARGENTINA DE FG - Argentina

LIMA SALTY - Peru

FIRST ATTACK PR - Puerto Rico

THUNDERSTRUCK - Mexico

NEVER GIVE UP - Chile

TRETA - Curitiba, Brazil