As the 2016 Hearthstone Championship Tour ends with BlizzCon in the coming weeks, Blizzard has announced its new format for Hearthstone eSports in 2017.
Global Season Championships will offer more global competitions throughout the season. This will combine the regional Season Championships into global Season Championships.
Season Playoffs will replace Season Preliminaries and will be split per region. Each of the four regions will send four representatives to Season Championships. Season Playoffs will have a Swiss Tournament format instead of Double Elimination.
HCT tournaments will be aligned with Standard Year format and its content releases. Each Season Championship will take place during its own content cycle. This means the next World Championship will be in 2018 and not at BlizzCon 2017, although there is a good chance one of the Season Championships will still most likely still be at BlizzCon.
The prize pool for 2017 will be increased to $2 million. The World Championship tournament will have a $1 million prize pool, while each Season Championship gets a $250,000 prize pool, and each Season Playoff will have at least a $20,000 prize pool.
Hearthstone Global Games will be a new eSports program which will feature teams of players from various countries competing in a weekly global league. Each team will consist of top Hearthstone point earners from their country and three community-voted players.
Hearthstone Inn-vitationals will be another eSports circuit with exhibition games that will showcase competitions between teams of players consisting of streamers, tournament winners, and celebrities.
Further details on the new Hearthstone eSports format will be released next year.
