CDL Challengers 2024 Season Explained: Schedule, Prize Pools & More
Fans of the amateur Call of Duty League Challengers circuit have been waiting months for an update on the 2024 season. Call of Duty League General Manager, Daniel Tsay announced that they would share details “shortly after game lauch” on November 2, 2023, and then said that they would “share details soon” on December 8, 2023. However, it’s taken until January 12, 2024 for the CDL Challengers schedule to be released.
CDL Challengers 2024 Schedule
Cups
The 2024 CDL Challengers Season will kick off on January 20, 2024, with the first Cup of the season. Challengers Cups are open events where players can earn pro points and prize money. These will be run in NA, EU, APAC and LATAM, with NA and EU featuring a $2,500 prize pool, and a $1,500 prize pool for APAC and LATAM. There will be 11 Cups throughout the season, with the final one taking place on June 16, 2024.
Opens
The first Challengers Open of the 2024 season will be hosted by the Boston Breach and will take place from Jan 26-28 at Major I. This event will be seeded by a combination of all 2024 Cup 1 points and 10% of each player's 2023 Challenger points. An additional Challengers Open will be hosted by Toronto Ultra at Major III.
Challengers Opens will feature a $100,000 prize pool.
Elite
- Three Challengers Elite Seasons will take place during the 2024 Challengers Season.
- Challengers Elite in North America & Europe continues with twelve teams (two groups of 6) with the top eight teams keeping their spot after each season.
- Challengers Elite Teams will not be allowed to participate in Cups falling upon the first week of their Challengers Elite Season and will be provided points and prizing instead. We want to ensure that teams outside of Elite are still given the opportunity to showcase their talents and earn points & prizing throughout the season.
Challengers Finals
Challengers Finals will see the top 16 teams in the world compete for a prize pool of $150,000. There are two methods by which Challengers teams can qualify for Challengers Finals:
- Regional Leaderboard: 10 Teams (4 NA, 4 EU, 1 APAC, and 1 LATAM)
- Last Chance Qualifier: 6 Teams (2 NA, 2 EU, 1 APAC, and 1 LATAM)
Community Reaction
To say that the community is disappointed by this announcement would be an understatement. Last season in the Call of Duty League, there were four LAN Challengers Opens, Raleigh, Boston, Texas, and Toronto, with an additional Challengers Finals in Las Vegas. Along with this, there were 12 Cups and 4 Elite Stages.
This Season, we’ll see just two LAN events, 11 Cups, and 3 Elite Stages.
Former Toronto Ultra Team Manager, Connor Chambers, took to X to reveal that he called out the League for a lack of Challengers support last season, just to be “privately torn apart by their brass the following day.”
He wasn’t the only member of the CDL to discuss Challengers support either, with The Rotation revealing that one CDL Pro asked about Challengers, and was told “You’re not playing there, don’t worry about it.”
The response from the Challengers community has been largely negative. While most understand that the Major Hosts may not be able to run Challengers Opens due to the added cost, it seems as though one of the three pillars of the CDL logo is falling apart.
