Riot Games announces new Tier 1 esports circuit for TFT

Riot Games has announced a new Tier 1 esports circuit for its automatic battles title, Teamfight Tactics (TFT). Each series will feature three new tournaments, offering regular prize money and a more direct path to the game’s main event series, the Tactician’s Crown.

In the updated TFT ecosystem, players can qualify for the Tier 1 circuit at the end of each series based on their performance in that series’ Gold Spatula, a tournament series that leads to the Tactician’s Crown.

The format update comes on the heels of the reveal of TFT’s new collection, Cyber City, in Riot’s Dev Drop for the game’s next cycle, Collection 15. In Cyber City, the top 28 Gold Spatula competitors from each region will qualify for the new circuit. Riot will invite four other players from each region.

Each of the three Tier 1 tournaments introduced with the new circuit will last for three days, with the final day featuring a unique eight-player lobby. In addition, at the end of the set, Circuit contestants will compete against the top players in the Ranked Trials and Cups ecosystem, who will be able to claim a spot in the next set’s Circuit.

Ranking points will be used to determine players’ rankings for the Gold Spatula of a set:

• 1st – 12th: Ranking for week 2.
• 13th – 24th: Ranking for week 1.
• 25th – 32nd: Play-Ins Qualification

While the new track represents a big step within the updated TFT ecosystem, players can still advance to the Golden Spatula through the game’s cups and ladder.

Golden Spatula expansion announced.

In Riot’s latest press release, the publisher also announced an expansion of the Golden Spatula. The event will now span two weekends instead of one, corresponding to an increase from three to six days.

The new format of the Golden Spatula includes three stages. Sixteen teams will participate in the first day’s Play-Ins, with the top eight teams advancing to the second stage. Over the course of Days 2 and 3, 48 players compete in the “Week 1” phase. The top 20 players from Week 1 move on to Week 2, where they will compete with 12 other contestants over two days. The top eight players qualify for the final Day 6 of the competition.

In addition, the 32 contestants who make it to Week 2 of the Gold Spatula also qualify for the Tier 1 circuit of the next series.

The promising future of TFT between challenges.

As TFT approaches set 15, Riot will introduce more updates for the game’s tier 1 and tier 2 scenes. Despite the publisher’s seemingly constant investment, Riot’s approach to TFT esports has been criticized by its community in the past, especially in relation to the persistent matchfixing problem.