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

- Invited Faint Gaming EU - Invited

- Invited froyotech - Invited

- Invited Se7en - Invited

- Invited SVIFT - Invited

- Invited Ora Elektro - Qualified

- Qualified Timed_out - Qualified

- 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

- Host/Commentator GrumpyKoi - Host/Commentator

- Host/Commentator Kermit - Commentator

- Commentator WARHURYEAH - Commentator

- Commentator Plunk - Commentator

- Commentator DuMmTm - Commentator

- Commentator eepily - Commentator

- Commentator gemm - Observer

- Observer Sim - Observer

- Observer ArchRhythm - Producer

- Producer Dan - Producer

- Producer Jon - Producer

Insomnia63 will be broadcasted live on Essentials.TF's Twitch channel.