RLCS Season 8: Dates, Prize Pool, Qualifiers And More For Rocket League Championship Series Season 8

The Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS) is back for its eighth season, with the best teams in Europe, North America, Oceania and South America once again competing for a prize pool of more than $1,000,000. RLCS Season 8 will begin off the back of the Rocket League Summit 1. The rival series will also return for its fifth season but the format will change compared to the last season

Last season's RLCS Season 7was won be Renault Vitality almost two months ago. Here are the details on this new season.

Read More: Rocket League Summit: Groups, Bracket And Format For Rocket League Summit 1

Rival Series

The rival series has now expanded from 8 teams to 10, bringing more players a shot at making the RLCS and bringing more high-level players into the mix. This now mean 6 teams will retain their Rival Series spots.

An extra week has also been added to the Promotion tournament, with the first week featuring brand new Rival Series Regional Playoff. This means that they're shifting focus from the beginning of the Rival Series to the playoffs, when every result counts towards an RLCS spot. That means that the Play Ins will no longer be broadcast, but there will be an additional week of broadcasted playoff action. You can read more about this in the official post by Rocket League.

This new phase of the Promotion Tournament will feature a Page Playoff format with the top four Rival Series teams competing for the chance to be one of two teams to compete in the Promotion Tournament. The qualifying Rival Series teams will play in the standard Promotion Tournament format (a double-elimination bracket) for their shot at RLCS qualification.

Rival Series Qualifiers

This season's Open Qualifiers will follow the same format, allowing your team to enter up to two qualifiers (of the four total qualifiers). Following the completion of all four qualifiers, the remaining top 128 teams will move on to the Play-In phase where they’ll fight to fill the remaining open Rival Series spots in both North America and Europe. You can sign up on the Smash.gg page.

Important Dates & Information

Sign Ups

• Now through August 26 - 12:00 p.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. UTC

North American Qualifiers

• August 31 - 10 a.m. PDT
• September 14 - 10 a.m. PDT
• September 17 - 3 p.m. PDT
• September 21 - 10 a.m. PDT

European Qualifiers

• September 1 - 11 a.m. UTC
• September 15 - 11 a.m. UTC
• September 18 - 4 p.m. UTC
• September 22 - 11 a.m. UTC

Rival Series Play-Ins

• North America - September 28
• Europe - September 29

RLCS League Play Begins

• North America - October 5
• Europe - October 6

Rival Series League Play Begins

• Europe - October 11 10 a.m. PDT / 5 p.m. UTC
• North America - October 11 4 p.m. PDT / 11 p.m. UTC

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Written ByChris Trout@TheTrout91