Image: Honor of Kings
The 2025 esports calendars for Honor of Kings opens with the Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3, here's everything you need to know about the tournament.
The Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3 will be the first official tournament hosted by developer Tencent this year and will also mark the beginning of the 2025 season for the game's esports scene. 12 teams from all across the globe will duke it out to determine who the top dog of the scene is to start the year, all while the Global ban-pick system makes its debut.
Here is everything you need to know about the Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3:
Dates, venue, and prize pool
The Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3 is set to take place from February 21 to March 1. The tournament will start with the Group Stage from February 21 to February 24, followed by the Knockout Stage from February 26 to February 28. Finally, the Grand Final will commence on March 1.
This season, the Honor of Kings Invitational will be held in Manila, the Philippines. The competition's venue is SM City North EDSA. All matches from the group stage to the grand final will be contested in the same venue.
The Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3 prize pool is $300,000 and will be distributed among the participating teams based on their final standings. Here is the detailed allocation:
- Champion: $100,000
- Runner-up: $50,000
- 3rd-4th place: $25,000
- 5th-8th place: $12,500
- 9th-12th place: $10,000
Format and the Global Ban-pick System explained
During the Group Stage, teams will be divided into four separate groups of three teams each: one seeded (Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Americas Qualifier champion) and two unseeded. All three teams will compete in a best-of-five round-robin series against other teams in the same group. The best two teams from each group will advance to the Knockout Stage while the bottom-placed team will be eliminated.
The Knockout Stage will use the single elimination tournament bracket with best-of-seven series. Group winners will be seeded in the stage, and teams from the same groups from the Group Stage will not meet with each other in the quarter-finals.
All series in the tournament will be implementing the Global Ban-pick System.
For this year and moving forward, the Honor of Kings esports will implement the Global Ban-pick system for all their official tournament hosted by Tencent. The Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3 will be the first time the system is enacted in the global scene, debuting its inherent calculated risk nature.
The Global Ban-pick System is a system wherein heroes that get picked in a game by any of the two competing sides can't be used again by both sides in the proceeding games of that match. This means 10 heroes will be automatically banned for the following game and another 10 for each game played. This does not include the usual bans that happened during the draft phase.
While the best-of-five series will launch with the aforementioned Global Ban-pick System, there is a special rule for the best-of-seven series if the game is tied to 3-3: the Ultimate Battle.
The Ultimate Battle is the last game of a best-of-seven in Honor of Kings esports and will feature no draft restrictions, allowing the selection of previously banned and picked heroes. Both teams may have the same hero lineups in the Ultimate Battle, ensuring every team will play at their full potential. There is one catch: The team must propose their lineup and common spells in three minutes.
The teams competing in the Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3
The twelve best teams in Honor of Kings will compete in the Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3. All teams will compete in the Group Stage. This year, however, the KPL's representative will not participate in the tournaments. As the host nation, the Philippines also gets another slot for their qualifier.
Here are the twelve teams that will compete in the Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3:
- Blacklist International (Champion of Philippines Qualifier)
- Elevate (Runner-up of Philippines Qualifier)
- Rough World Era (Third-place of Philippines Qualifier)
- Bigetron Esports (Champion of Indonesia Qualifier)
- Kagendra (Runner-up of Indonesia Qualifier)
- Nova Esports (Champion of Malaysia Qualifier)
- All Gamers Global (Runner-up of Malaysia Qualifier)
- Impunity (Champion of Wildcard Qualifier)
- Alpha 7 (Champion of Americas Qualifier)
- Team Vitality (Champion of Europe Qualifier)
- Gen.G (Champion of MENA Qualifier)
- Nongshim Redforce (Champion of JPKR Qualifier)
The Honor of Kings Invitational Season 3 will kick off the 2025 season. Who will be the best team at the start of the year, and can they maintain their status for the rest of 2025?
