A gameplay snap shot of Halo Infinite

Halo Infinite esports season schedule and more announced

The Halo Championship Series announces its format, prize pools and everything else related to esports

Declan McLaughlin

Published: Nov 16, 2021 04:52 pm

The Halo Championship Series announced its competitive schedule Tuesday. Halo will return to the esports landscape with a full calendar in 2022 and a the HCS Kickoff Major in Raleigh, North Carolina set to start on Dec. 17, 2021. That statement also included information about where to watch the upcoming games, who will organize the events, prize pools and the format

Halo esports regions

The HCS will operate in four regions, North America, Europe, Mexico and Oceania. Each region will also get its own tournament organizer. Europe will have DreamHack run its tournaments, while ESL Australia gets Oceania and Mexico will use Gaming Partners. Each region will also follow the roadmap of events which have five tiers: Online tournaments, Pros Series, Supers or Regional tournaments, Majors and the Halo World Championship.

Each region will see one online Regional tournament and one LAN event. The online tournaments, Pro Series events and Regionals will all focus on regional competition. Majors and the World Championship will be open to all regions. Everything up to Majors will feature open brackets that any team can qualify for, but some tournaments will allow players to qualify directly to others.

Prizing, format and cosmetics

The new HCS format will feature two splits across regions that will include a regional in every region followed by a Major. The current roadmap has all four regions battling it out in their own tournaments through Feburary and till the end of March, with a Major in Kansas City, Missouri to cap off the split. The same goes for the second split, which runs from July to September with a Major in Orlando, Florida capping off the split at the end of the month. The Halo World Championships are slated to begin on Oct. 20, 2022. Online tournaments and Pro series will run in the days between Majors.

According to 343 Studio’s statement, a $3,000,000 prize pool has been allocated across the different tournaments and the company will be taking in crowdfunding to increase the competitor’s payouts. Majors will start off at a base of $250,000 up for grabs while the regionals will see $125,000 for North American tournaments, $100,000 for Europe and $50,000 for Oceania and Mexico. The Halo World Championships will feature a $1,000,000 prize pool.

Crowdfunding will come from the in-game store as well as general crowdfunding for specific events like Regionals and Majors. The community will be capped for their contributions for tournaments “in order to maintain a steady and reliable prize pool for each of the tournaments throughout the season,” that statement says.

Players can also support Halo esports in specific buy purchasing team cosmetics in the in-game store. Acceding to the statement, a large chunk of the money will be shared with the tournament organizers helping run the HCS circuit.

Fans can watch the revival of Halo esports with the Raleigh Major on Dec. 17.

Author

Declan McLaughlin

Declan is an esports journalist and part-time editor for Upcomer. He is an avid gamer and League of Legends player. You can find him at the bottom of the leaderboard in most games or on Twitter.