This Wednesday, May 20, the second Major of the competitive
Rocket League season begins in Paris, less than a year after the 2025 World Championship, which was already held in France, in Lyon. A total of
16 teams will compete over five days, until May 24, for $354,000 in prize money, but above all for RLCS points, which are crucial for qualification to the World Championship later this year.
Set to take place at the Paris La Défense Arena, the crowd will attend from May 22 until the end of the competition to support their favorite players inside Europe’s largest indoor arena, with a capacity of more than 20,000 seats. A crowd that could largely be French, with three local organizations qualified for the event through Europe: Gentle Mates, Karmine Corp, and Team Vitality, alongside Ninjas in Pyjamas and the esports division of Manchester City.
A format for Rocket League
Those teams, just like the other eleven participants, will first need to survive the group stage before hoping to reach the playoffs and play in front of the crowd. For this opening stage of the Major, the 16 teams have been split into
four groups of four, where every team will face each other once in Best-of-five series. The
top team from each group will qualify directly to the winner bracket of the playoffs, while the bottom team will be immediately eliminated from the
Paris Major. The teams finishing
second and third will move into the lower bracket, where they will battle until only two remain before the upper bracket teams join the playoffs.
Called the Hybrid Elimination Bracket, this format, unique to
Rocket League esports, shortens the playoff stage, meaning that teams starting in the winner bracket will eventually drop to lower no matter what. As a result, the two losers from the upper bracket quarterfinals will face the teams advancing through the rest of the lower bracket, while the winners of those matches will move directly into the semifinals, where they will meet the teams coming from the previous lower bracket round. Every playoff series, including the grand final, will be played as a Best-of-seven.
What to expect at Paris Major
Europe sends five representatives to the event, with KCorp and Team Vitality set to face each other immediately in Group A, as there are only four groups in total. They will take on Wildcard, the Oceanic region’s first seed and sole representative, as well as FUT Esports, North America’s fourth seed. Runner-up in Boston last February, the Bees had already faced the BlueWall in their group at that event, with Team Vitality coming out on top in a 3-2 series victory.
NRG, North America’s first seed and historically the region’s most successful team, enters as the favorite in Group B, where they will face MIBR, Brazil’s first seed, as well as Five Fears, the top seed from the Sub-Saharan Africa region. A group full of regional champions that Manchester City, Europe’s fifth and final representative, will have to overcome. Already drawn into the same group in Boston at the previous Major, the South African players from 5F failed to challenge NRG and finished last in their group without winning a single game.
The first back-to-back?
MENA’s first seed, Twisted Minds, led by two-time world champion Evan "M0nkey M00n" Rogez, will face TSM, also a first seed, but from the APAC region, one of the weakest leagues in the Rocket League ecosystem. They will also take on Shopify Rebellion and NIP, respectively North America’s and South America’s third seeds. The two teams had also met in Boston during the opening round of the lower bracket, with the series going in favor of the North American organization.
In the final group, Gentle Mates, champions of the first Major of 2026 and Europe’s second seed, could be considered favorites for first place and will try to achieve the first-ever Major back-to-back. Spacestation Gaming, also a second seed but from North America, will be in contention alongside R8 Esports, MENA’s second representative, and FURIA, Brazil’s second seed. Having qualified ahead of Team Falcons, this marks the first time in the organization’s history that R8 has reached an international LAN over one of the region’s historic names.
