Photo: Blizzard
The next chapter of Korea’s premier tournament starts in just over two weeks.
The foreign presence in the third season of OGN APEX will be halved, down to two instead of four. The news was confirmed during today’s Challenger Super Week broadcast.
This change will free additional slots for Challenger teams to step into the main even spotlights. The tournament is currently in its relegation stage, which pits the bottom four teams from the previous season with the best four challenger teams, who all will go through two rounds of group stages before six rosters are promoted to the upper tier.
According to Ali “Alicus” Saba, CEO and general manager of the newly founded Laser Kittenz, said two foreign teams have already been announced and confirmed their participation, though official announcement is still lacking. Season 2 of APEX extended invitations to then reigning champions EnVyUs alongside Cloud9, Misfits and Fnatic but the western contenders couldn’t stand up to the much improved Korean scene. Of the four, only EnVyUs reached as far as the top eight, the other three teams facing elimination in the first round.
Alicus himself tweeted at the end of March that his team is planning a bootcamp in Korea “in 3-4 weeks” which in theory would place them in Seoul just in time for APEX Season 3, scheduled to start April 28. Around the same time, eUnited announced a similar intention.
Whether eUnited and Kittenz will indeed be APEX’s invites or the organization has reached out to foreign powerhouses such as EnVyUs, Rogue or Immortals should become clear in the coming days. The Korean line-up for the event will be locked by the end of the week as the Promotion Week completes.
