For the first time ever, the APAC LAN Finals will be held outside of Sydney, Australia, and teams will travel to the Land of the Rising Sun’s capital, Tokyo.

As per usual, two teams from each sub-region (ANZ, SEA, JP, and KR) will be fighting it out in a single-elimination Best-of-Three (Bo3) format to reach the Grand Final, and thus achieve qualification to the international Pro League Finals. With the finals being held in Brazil once again, albeit in Rio de Janeiro, teams will be giving it their absolute all to get their tickets to the South American city.

The playoffs to decide the seeds for the Season 8 APAC Finals, however, saw things get a little lopsided. Aerowolf from Southeast Asia (SEA) kicked the shenanigans off, with underdogs Xavier Esports defeating them 2-1 and grabbing the 1st-seed. This started an apparent chain reaction, with every sub-region’s favourites falling to the underdogs -- Mantis FPS (ex-Element Mystic) lost to New Life in Korea (KR), Fnatic lost to Athletico Esports in Australia-New Zealand (ANZ), and NORA-Rengo lost to Sengoku Gaming Extasy in Japan (JP).

With the JP playoffs only concluding on the 26th of September, the brackets were finally made public today In the upper half, home-side NORA-Rengo takes on the Koreans of New Life -- with the latter only appearing for the second time at any APAC LAN event. Next, the Aussies on Athletico will get their much awaited rematch against Aerowolf after the latter had ended their run at the Paris Major Qualifiers LAN event.

In the bottom half, we see another rematch, but one the home side of Sengoku Gaming would have been hoping to avoid after the Australians on Fnatic had smashed them 10-0 in the Season 7 APAC LAN Quarterfinals. Finally, LAN-debutants Xavier Esports from SEA will be going up against the formidable Mantis FPS. The Korean team will be tough nut to crack, with the team having lots of experience from the Season 6 Pro League Finals, and more recently the Paris Major where they defeated Immortals 2-1.

With the APAC region developing at a rapid pace, and every region’s underdog team having beat the favourites, these APAC LAN Finals are going to be the closest ones yet. Catch all the action from Tokyo, Japan, on the 13th and 14th of October from 9:45 AM GMT+9 onwards at twitch.tv/Rainbow6.