Ubisoft today announced that the Six Invitational 2023 will be held from Feb. 7 to 19 at Place Bell in Montréal, Canada.
The event will return to its home in Montréal after having been shifted to Paris, France for 2021 and Stockholm, Sweden for 2022. However, Ubisoft had also originally planned for SI 2022 to be held in Montréal before "renewed regulations and event restrictions in Quebec" forced the change in location.
SI 2023 will also mark a return of live audiences at the world championship event, with all three Six Majors after SI 2022 open to the public for their playoffs.
The group stage of SI 2023 will run from Feb. 7 to 11, with a break scheduled for Feb. 12. The playoffs will then commence from Feb. 13 to 15, before another break day on Feb. 18.
The playoffs will then resume on Feb. 17 and the event will culminate with the BO5 grand-final match on Feb. 19. These final three days will be open to the public, with tickets already on sale.
The format of the event will likely follow SI 2022, where the 20 teams had been split into four groups. Each team played one BO3 against the others, with three points given for a 2-0 win, two points for a 2-1 win, and one point for a 1-2 loss.
The top team in each group then proceeded to the second round in the upper bracket, while second and third placed teams proceeded to the first round in the upper bracket. Fourth placed teams directly went to the lower bracket, while fifth place teams were eliminated.
Each match in the playoff was also a BO3, except for the BO5 grand-final, which had no map advantage. Instead, the upper bracket team had been able to pick a map to kick off the veto process instead of being forced to ban a map.
What is the Six Invitational?
The Six Invitational is the annual world championship Rainbow Six Siege event and has featured a US$3 million prize pool since 2020, compared to US$500,000 for Majors.
It was first held in 2017 in Montréal, the home of the Ubisoft studio in charge of devlopment for the game. It was held there every year until the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions forced the 2021 and 2022 versions to be played without crowds in Paris and Stockholm, respectively.
TSM FTX are the current holders of the Caber, the sledgehammer-shaped trophy awarded to the world champions. Ninjas in Pyjamas, Spacestation Gaming, G2 Esports, PENTA Sports, and Continuum have won the prior events on PC, alongside Elevate on Xbox in 2017.
Who has qualified for SI 2023 so far?
A total of eight teams have qualified for SI 2023 so far; G2 Esports, Rogue, and Wolves Esports from Europe, w7m esports from LATAM, and DarkZero Esports, Oxygen Esports, Astralis, and XSET from NA.
Eight more teams will join them as part of the Global Standings, which total SI Points earned from each stage and Major across the year. Four further places will then be up for grabs in Dec. 2022 and Jan. 2023 through the SI Qualifiers in the APAC, EU, NA, and LATAM regions.
TSM will not be able to qualify as one of the top 16 teams in the Global Standings. As a result, they will have to fight through the NA open qualifier to attempt a title defense.