Professional Rainbow 6 Siege Tournaments

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege entered the professional eSports arena more than six years ago. There have been ups and downs, but now, the Rainbow Six Siege tournament schedule is quite busy. The game tournaments vary in size and prestige level, yet each of these events deserves your attention.

If you are a fan of this eSports discipline and want to learn more about the R6 championships, we’ll gladly share every bite of information that we have.

Rainbow Six Siege Tournament Rules

LAN/Offline

The majority of Rainbow Six tournament events are held offline. However, some most awaited and largest competitions are carried out in the LAN/offline format. Here belong:

• Six Invitational, which is the main event of the year;
• Six Major Series — tournaments that are held in different regional leagues and allow qualifying for the Six Invitational championships;
• Local Leagues Finals (Campeonato Sudamericano, Campeonato Mexicano, North American League, etc.)

The location of the event and its prize pool varies depending on whether it is an international competition or a local championship. Naturally, the higher the level of the competition is, the larger sums appear on the prize money scale.

The formats and the Rainbow Six Siege tournament rules differ, depending on the league, yet the 5v5 team format is the same throughout the championships.

Number of Rounds and Maps

The standard ranked game will consist of 8 rounds in the round-robin format and playoffs are held in the best-of-three series format. In some championships, the number of rounds may be different and range between four to nine rounds.

The map pool for Rainbow 6 Siege tournaments looks like this:

• Border is a Middle East location map in the R6 Siege. Only the Bomb mode is used during tournaments.
• Chalet is the map that has been on the R6 tournaments since its release. The map location is Courchevel, France.
• Clubhouse is another map that has been on the competition list since the game’s release. The map location is Hannover, Germany.
• Bank, located in LA, California, is one more map included since the release.
• Kafe Dostoevsky. Location — Moscow. It was reworked and released in 2019.
• Oregon was one of the four maps to be reworked after the Six Invitational 2020.
• Skyscraper was presented at Operation Red Crow in 2016. Location — Nagoya, Japan.
• Theme Park was released in 2017 and reworked only two years later. The map location is Hong Kong.
• Villa map’s location is Tuscany, Italy. The map entered the tournament map pool in 2018.

Prize Pools of Champs

By the total prize pool, Rainbow Six Siege championships take the 11^th place with the total amount reaching $30,983,366. The prize money sums vary in different championships. The main event of the R6 competitive season, Six Invitational, has had a three-million dollar prize pool since 2020.

Other top-tier tournaments, like Six Major, offer half a million dollar prize money. The participants of the Gamers 8 League tournament final were competing for a $1.2 million prize in 2022. The prize pools of the lower-rated events typically stay within the $20,000 range.

Organizers

The main R6 tournament organizer is Ubisoft, which is a game-publishing company. The right to organize the main tournament of the year, Six Invitational, belongs exclusively to Ubisoft. Speaking about the other competitions, they usually have several organizers. Six Major Series, for instance, is organized by Ubisoft in connection with ESL and Faceit.

The list of companies involved in the organization of R6 Siege tournaments varies year by year. Besides, it also differs between the Regional leagues. Anyway, the Ubisoft title is always on the list, as this company owns the exclusive right to carry out such events.

R6 Tournament Types

There are several types of R6 tournaments out there, so we’ll take a look at some of them to know more details.

World Championship

The tournament that is considered the World Championship in Rainbow Six Siege eSports is called Six Invitational. This annual event always takes place in Montreal, Canada. Its organizers are Ubisoft (the game-publishing company) and ESL. Unlike many other eSports where the World Championships are held at the end of the year, Six Invitation usually takes place in February of the new year.

The championship format includes the Group Stage and the Playoffs. The Group Stage is held between four groups of five teams in the round-robin format. The best team from each group enters the Upper Bracket Round 2, while those taking the second and the third places go to the Upper Bracket Round 1 of the Playoffs. The participants showing the worst result in each group leave the competition, and the remaining teams are transferred to the Lower Bracket of the Playoffs.

The Playoffs’ format is a double-elimination bracket, and all matches determine the best of three. The Grand final is a best-of-five. This Rainbow Six Siege tournament prize pool reaches 3 million USD.

Challenger League Competitions

Challenger League competitions are regional competitions held in several regions. Season 11 of the League covered events in Europe and North and South America. Season 10 was more diverse in the events as it involved the listed locations plus ANZ, Japan, South Korea, and SEA regions.

Challenger League is the lower league of the R6 Pro League. Its events go online only. The prize pools for the competitions range from $5000 to $53,000.

Open Tournaments

Open Siege Series is a single-elimination bracket series that aims to attract new teams to the professional Rainbow Six Siege eSports. The competitions are held within the North American League and are available across all platforms, including XBOX, PS4, and PC. The prize money for this championship is minimum, but this should be seen as a chance to enter pro-level competitions.

How Popular Are the R6 Tournaments These Days?

Rainbow Six Siege is quite a rather new eSports compared to other first-person shooter titles. This is partially the reason R6 championships are only gaining popularity. As of now, the all-time peak views of R6 tournaments are a bit more than 316,000 viewers. This personal record was set in 2018 during the Six Invitational championships.

Of course, the amount of prize pools is not comparable to CS:GO world championships, but the potential is enormous. We strongly believe that this is only the beginning of the R6 way to the top of the world eSports. And Rainbow Six events have the potential to make it to the best and most popular eSports championships of the year.