Crown Open Season 14 — the flagship event of the season

The Crown Open is the flagship tournament on the Season 14 calendar. Eight invited sides, four qualifier winners, four host cities, a global final in Tokyo. The Crown Open is the tournament every other tournament on the calendar is built around.

The format is a group stage followed by a double-elimination playoff bracket. Group stage matches are Bo3 across two round-robin groups of six. The top four from each group advance to the playoff bracket, with the group winners seeded into the upper bracket and the runners-up into the lower bracket. The playoff bracket is Bo5 throughout.

The prize pool is set at $1.4M, distributed across the eight invited sides and the four qualifier winners. The qualifier path runs through the three regional opens — EU, Americas and APAC. Each regional open sends one qualifier to the Crown Open playoff bracket. The fourth qualifier is the winner of the cross-regional play-in.

The host cities for the group stage are Berlin, São Paulo, Singapore and Seoul. Each group is anchored to a host city for the group stage and the winners travel to the playoff host for the bracket. The playoff host is Berlin. The global final is in Tokyo.

The Crown Open is the one tournament of the year where coaches, managers and analysts appear in the post-match press conference. The desk covers every press conference in full and the news desk flags any roster news from the qualifier cycle within an hour of the official announcement.

The defending champions are Cobalt, who took the Season 13 title in the Bo7 final against Aurora. Cobalt are the only side to have won back-to-back titles in the open era. The desk reads the Crown Open as the structural test of every other roster on the circuit — the depth of the map pool, the read on the meta and the bench depth all come under the microscope over the four-week cycle.

The Crown Open broadcast is the deepest cast rotation of the year. Two former IGLs and a current coach join the analyst desk for the playoff bracket. The desk's coverage of the Crown Open runs four articles a day during the group stage and six a day during the playoff bracket. Every match of the bracket is previewed and recapped on the day.

The desk's standing note on the Crown Open is that the second map of the playoff bracket is the most informative read on the eventual champion. The first map is the read; the second map is the answer. The desk's bracket reader picks the eventual champion from the second map of the upper bracket final.