In this article
The Call of Duty League has a new company behind the cameras for the last and biggest weekend of its season. On Thursday, February 5, 2026, ESL FACEIT Group published the official details of the 2026 Call of Duty League Championship together with FaZe Esports and the league itself. In that release the tournament organizer is named the event's official production partner, and FaZe Esports its host organization.
The championship is the tournament that ends the league's year and crowns its champion: the release presents it as a four-day tournament. It runs from July 16 to July 19, 2026 at the Michelob ULTRA Arena, inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, with a prize pool of US$2 million. Tickets were already on sale through the ticketing company AXS when the release went out.
The Esports Advocate, which reported the announcement the same day, noted that it is the first time ESL FACEIT Group works with the league and with FaZe Esports on the season-ending championship. The Call of Duty League belongs to Activision Blizzard, the publisher of the game.
ESL FACEIT Group release of February 5, 2026; team count from the league description in the same release.
What the three parties announced
The release is short and carries no quote from any of the three parties. It fixes five things: the dates, the venue, the prize pool, where tickets are sold and who does what.
ESL FACEIT Group is the production partner. In esports that covers the work of putting a tournament on stage and on screen: the show in the arena, the broadcast and the running of the event. FaZe Esports is the host organization, through FaZe Vegas, the team that represents the city in the league. Registration and event information are handled through AXS, the release says.
Related readEsports World Cup 2026 leaves Riyadh and moves to ParisSome points are absent from the release. It does not say how many of the league's twelve teams play in Las Vegas, how they qualify, how the US$2 million is divided, or where the matches will be broadcast. It gives no ticket prices either.
A league where teams host the big weekends
The split between a host and a producer comes from the way the Call of Duty League is built. It is a franchise league: twelve teams hold permanent places, and each carries the name of a city. During the season the teams meet at Majors, the league's large in-person tournaments, and a Major is hosted by one of the teams in its own market or, in 2026, by a festival. The league's 2026 roadmap gives the first Major of the year to Dallas, hosted by OpTic Texas.
FaZe Vegas is a new name for an old member of the league. According to The Esports Advocate, the team is run jointly by Atlanta Esports Ventures, which owns the league place, and GameSquare Holdings, the company that owns FaZe Esports. It played as Atlanta FaZe until the end of 2025, when it took its new identity and moved to its new host city. The championship is the first event it hosts under that name.
The host and the producer are not the same party
FaZe Esports hosts the championship through its Las Vegas team. ESL FACEIT Group produces it. The league, owned by Activision Blizzard, remains the competition's owner and announced the event with both.
From a venue announcement to a production partner
The February release is the second announcement about the event in a week. On January 30, 2026, the Call of Duty League said that Championship Weekend 2026 would be held at the Michelob ULTRA Arena, hosted by FaZe Vegas. The Esports Advocate reported that day that the arena seats between 10,000 and 12,000 people depending on its configuration, and that it would be the first time FaZe Vegas served as host and handled production, with support from its sponsors and partners.
Related readEsports World Cup 2027 Opens Direct and Satellite Qualifier RoutesFaZe Vegas ran its own ticket launch at that point: fans who had registered on the team's site were told first, a presale opened in the morning and the general sale followed in the afternoon, according to the same report.
Six days later the production side had a name. The February 5 release places ESL FACEIT Group beside the team as the official production partner, and adds the two facts the venue announcement had left open: the dates of July 16 to 19 and the prize pool of US$2 million.
Las Vegas is not new ground for the league's final weekend. The Esports Advocate recalled that the 2023 championship was played in the city, at the Thomas and Mack Center, and that the 2025 edition was held in Canada, in the Waterloo Region near the Greater Toronto Area.
Who ESL FACEIT Group is
ESL FACEIT Group, often shortened to EFG, is an international tournament organizer. It is the company behind the ESL competitions, the FACEIT platform, the DreamHack gaming festivals and Esports Engine. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Savvy Games Group, which belongs to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Esports Engine came into the group in March 2023, when ESL FACEIT Group bought its parent company, Vindex. Adam Apicella, who co-founded Esports Engine and was its president, left at the time of that sale. He came back on October 3, 2024, as the group's senior vice president of esports for North America, The Esports Advocate reported then. In its article on the championship, the outlet describes him as a former Activision Blizzard esports executive who now works for the organizer.
Related readFalcons and FURIA Clinch Thunderpick Playoff Spots as Two Teams FallThe third Call of Duty stop for the organizer in 2026
The championship is not an isolated contract. Before the Las Vegas announcement, ESL FACEIT Group's festival brand had already taken two of the season's four Majors.
Major II is played at DreamHack Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, from March 27 to 29, 2026. The Esports Advocate calls it the first DreamHack Birmingham, and described the trip as a return for the league after a five-year absence. Major III is part of DreamHack Atlanta, from May 15 to 17, 2026, at the Georgia World Congress Center. When DreamHack announced it on November 4, 2025, The Esports Advocate noted that it was the first time the festival hosted a Call of Duty League Major, and that all twelve teams would play there for points toward Championship Weekend. The Atlanta festival claimed nearly 40,000 visitors in 2025, its seventh year in the city, and its 2026 edition also carries a Counter-Strike 2 tournament, IEM Atlanta, with US$1,050,000 in prize money.
With the championship added, three of the five weekends that make up the four Majors and the championship of the 2026 season involve the same organizer.
| Event | Where | When | ESL FACEIT Group role |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Major | Dallas, hosted by OpTic Texas | Not dated in the roadmap | None announced |
| Second Major | DreamHack Birmingham | March 27 to 29 | Festival host |
| Third Major | DreamHack Atlanta | May 15 to 17 | Festival host |
| Fourth Major | Paris | Not dated in the roadmap | None announced |
| Championship | Las Vegas, hosted by FaZe Vegas | July 16 to 19 | Production partner |
Call of Duty League roadmap as reported by The Esports Advocate on October 29, 2025 and January 30, 2026; DreamHack announcement of November 4, 2025; ESL FACEIT Group release of February 5, 2026.
How the 2026 season leads to Las Vegas
The league presented its 2026 season on October 29, 2025, in a video with Daniel Tsay, the general manager of Call of Duty esports. The season is played on Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and opened on the weekend of December 5, 2025. Sheep Esports reported at the end of November that the league's broadcasts were returning to Twitch for the season.
The calendar has four Majors and then Championship Weekend. Between Majors, teams play online qualifying matches that decide who goes where in the next Major's bracket. For the stretch between the first and second Majors the league used the longer gap to schedule a full round robin, a format in which every team plays every other team once, so each of the twelve teams plays 11 matches. Two teams are eliminated from contention for Major II at the end of it. The teams seeded seventh to tenth then go through a play-in, a short preliminary round, to complete an eight-team double-elimination bracket, in which a team is out only after it loses twice.
The roadmap holds more than the Majors. The ProAm Classic returns: four teams from Challengers, the tier below the league, join the twelve franchise teams in four groups of four, and the top two of each group move on to an eight-team double-elimination bracket. The Challengers Opens, the open tournaments of that second tier, rise from three to four, one at each Major the league hosts, and the Middle East joins the European Challengers region. In the game itself, a mode named Overload replaces Control in the 2026 competitive rotation. The league also listed a stop at the Esports World Cup in Riyadh in 2026.
Points earned across the season count toward Championship Weekend. The DreamHack announcement states it for Major III, where the twelve teams play for points toward Las Vegas.
What is still to come before July
The next date in the calendar is Major II in Birmingham, from March 27 to 29, followed by Major III in Atlanta from May 15 to 17. Major IV in Paris had no published dates in the roadmap reported in January.
For the championship itself, the dates, the arena, the prize pool and the ticket seller are now fixed, along with the names of the host and the producer. The number of teams that travel to Las Vegas, the way the US$2 million is shared and the broadcast arrangements for the four days are the parts of the event the three parties have yet to publish.
The name this event could hold, on the bracket and everywhere else.
An example of the format. It does not mean the name is registered, used or endorsed by anyone named in this article.
Discover .esports →The .esports registry publishes Esports Observer, so the whole scene can read its news for free.
