The WCS Challenger ladder race for Valencia, the third stop in the WCS circuit, is set to start this Thursday, May 25th. The qualification process will be exactly the same as for both previous Challenger events this year, with four players from both Europe and North America getting the chance to compete for $10,000 and 1,000 WCS points per region.

You can find the prize distribution per region as follows:

If you’re not yet familiar with the tournament structure and ruleset, be sure to take a look at our previous article explaining the WCS Challenger format for 2017 to catch up on all the details.

Sign up to the open cups today!

Schedule

The European part of the competition starts in only two days, on May 25th,  followed by NA one weeks after. You can find the step-by-step schedule for each region below.

EU Ladder

• Thursday, May 25, 21:00 CEST - Promotion window 1
• Friday, May 26, 21:00 CEST - Promotion window 2
• Saturday, May 27, 21:00 CEST - Promotion window 3
• Sunday, May 28, 21:00 CEST - Promotion window 4
• Sunday, May 28, 23:59 CEST – Grand Master League cut-off based on MMR

EU Open Cups

• Tuesday, May 30 - EU Open Cup #1
• Wednesday, May 31 - EU Open Cup #2

EU Finals

• Friday, June 2 - EU Playoffs Day 1
• Saturday, June 3 - EU Playoffs Day 2 

NA Ladder

• Thursday, June 1, 21:00 EDT - Promotion window 1
• Friday, June 2, 21:00 EDT - Promotion window 2
• Saturday, June 3, 21:00 EDT - Promotion window 3
• Sunday, June 4, 21:00 EDT - Promotion window 4
• Sunday, June 4, 23:59 EDT - Grand Master League cut-off based on MMR

NA Open Cups

• Tuesday, June 6 - NA Open Cup #1
• Wednesday, June 7 - NA Open Cup #2

NA Finals

• Friday, June 9 - NA Playoffs Day 1
• Saturday, June 10 - NA Playoffs Day 2

Requirements

Players must be eligible to compete based on residency requirements outlined in section 4.4 of the WCS 2017 rules. To be eligible for the ladder race, players must complete 15 ladder games a day during each region’s four-day Grand Master League promotion window.

Starting at the Thursday promotion window, players will be required to play under the name that they wish to use during the WCS Circuit event. Please contact [email protected] if you require a free character name change to compete.

All open cups and play-offs can be found on our WCS portal, so don’t hesitate to sign yourself up for your chance to become a part of WCS Valencia. Those primarily interested in watching the action live on stream, be sure to head over to www.twitch.tv/starcraft where the proven duo of Yoan “ToD” Merlo and James ”Kaelaris” Carrol will be cover all the matches.

And don’t forget that you can follow ESL StarCraft II on both Twitter and Facebook to receive any further update regarding our StarCraft II tournaments and upcoming WCS Challenger events.