Krafton rebuilds PUBG's EMEA and Americas circuits around open scrims

The two regional competitions that feed PUBG: Battlegrounds teams from Europe and the Americas into the game's global circuit have a new shape for 2026. Krafton, the publisher, set out the format of the PUBG EMEA Championship and the PUBG Americas Series on February 19, 2026, through its PUBG Esports news page, with a detailed format guide published the same day. Esports Insider reported the changes on February 23.

Both competitions now follow the same three stages: Scrims and Cups, then Playoffs, then Finals. Any team can enter at the bottom. The season opens on Monday, March 2, and runs for more than ten weeks, and the teams that finish on top of the first edition in each region are invited to every PUBG Global Series event of the second half of the year.

PUBG Esports, regional competitive refresh and format guide, both February 19, 2026.

Two regions, one new model

PUBG: Battlegrounds is a battle royale, a genre in which many squads drop onto the same map and the last one standing wins the match. In competition, a match day is a series of such matches, and teams score points for where they finish in each one and for every opponent they eliminate. The team with the most points over the day, or over several days, wins the event.

Krafton calls its regional events the Regional Series. EMEA, the region that covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has the PUBG EMEA Championship, known as PEC. The Americas have the PUBG Americas Series, or PAS. Krafton's format guide calls their first editions of 2026 PEC: Spring and PAS1.

The publisher describes the new format as a hybrid model. According to its format guide, it combines the accessibility of the PUBG Players Tour of 2025 with the structure and prestige of the existing regional series, folded into one extended season. Krafton's announcement gives two aims: to make organized play accessible to players of every level, and to keep a path to the global stage that rests on performance. The same structure applies in both regions; the format guide describes one model for PEC and PAS alike.

One change touches every match day. A day now holds five matches, one fewer than the six-match days of 2025, Krafton says, but the season has more match days in total.

Five weeks of scrims and Cups

The first stage is where every team starts. Scrims are organized practice matches, and in this format they work as a weekly qualifier. Each week opens with three days of scrims played as an elimination bracket: teams drop out day by day. Every session is five matches against other organized teams.

After the third scrim day, the 16 best teams move on to that week's Cup. Cups are played every Saturday as a one-day event of five matches, and every placement point and every elimination counts toward the result.

The cycle repeats for five weeks. Over those five weekends the Cups build an overall leaderboard, and that table is what sends teams on. Krafton's format guide puts at 19 the number of teams that reach the Playoffs from the weekly Cups, and it names two routes: the overall Cups leaderboard, and a win in the fourth or the fifth Cup. Esports Insider describes the same two routes: the best teams of the total Cups leaderboard, and the winners of the Cups of weeks four and five. The late Cups therefore give a team that started slowly a direct way in.

Position on the leaderboard matters beyond qualification. A higher finish gives a team more days in the Playoffs, and so more chances to reach the Finals.

A Playoffs weekend with a daily cut-off

The Playoffs bring in a second group: invited teams from the region, who join the teams that came through the Cups. They are played over three days of a weekend, and the stage is held twice, on April 17 to 19 and again on May 1 to 3, according to Esports Insider. The second Playoffs feature the same teams as the first, Krafton says.

The mechanism is built around a line drawn on each day's leaderboard. A team that finishes above it on any single day qualifies for the Finals. A team that does not keeps no score: points reset for the next day. Teams that qualified are then replaced by teams ranked below them on the Cups leaderboard, and the line rises each day.

Seeding follows the Cups. Krafton's guide gives two examples. A team third on the Cups leaderboard starts on the first day and has three chances to qualify. A team 18th starts on the third day and has one. Invited teams are the exception and are not seeded from the Cups.

Finals and the road to the global circuit

The Finals keep the classic format of three days, in which points from every placement and every elimination add up across the weekend. The team with the most points at the end takes the title. As with the Playoffs, there are two Finals weekends, the second following the second Playoffs. The number of teams in each Final and the prize money of each regional stage are not part of the announcement. The roadmap of February 9 gives one related figure: about US$130,000 in new prize pools for Regional Cups, without a split by region.

What the regional season unlocks is clearer. The top-performing teams of PEC: Spring and PAS1 are invited to all PUBG Global Series events of the second half of 2026, Krafton says. The PUBG Global Series, or PGS, is the publisher's international circuit. The first of those events is PGS 2026 Circuit 3, Series 1, in August, with a prize pool of US$100,000 per tournament, Esports Insider reported. The announcement does not fix how many teams will be invited. A PGS circuit, as the roadmap describes it, runs over three consecutive weeks: Series 1, Series 2 and a Series Final, with results carried forward so that each circuit works as a short season ending with a Circuit Champion. The twelve series of the year share US$2,000,000 in prize money.

The regional events also award PGC Points, the points that lead to the PUBG Global Championship, or PGC, the event that decides the world title at the end of the year. Krafton calls regional play the main way for teams to earn them. Reaching the Finals through the Playoffs is worth a small number of points, more for a team that qualifies earlier, but a strong Finals performance is what secures a PGC place, according to the format guide. The same point values apply to the first and the second Playoffs and Finals.

Where the regions fit in the 2026 season

The new format fills a gap in the calendar that Krafton published on February 9. That roadmap gives the PUBG Global Series four Global Circuits, each made of three series, and places two Regional Series in the year, in April and in September. The PUBG Nations Cup follows in June, the Esports World Cup in July, and the PUBG Global Championship ends the season in December. Each PGS has 24 teams: twelve Global Partner Teams, guaranteed their places for the whole year, and twelve Regional Series qualifiers.

For the first half of the year, those twelve regional places were filled by invitation. On February 13 Krafton named two teams from each of six regional competitions. The PUBG EMEA Championship sent S2G Esports and Team Vitality, and the PUBG Americas Series sent FURIA and Team Liquid. They play beside the Global Partner Teams of their regions: Natus Vincere, Twisted Minds and Virtus.pro for EMEA, and Team Falcons for the Americas.

The second half works differently. According to the roadmap, the selection of regional teams for the PGS events from August weighs heavily on results in the Regional Series of the first half. That is what PEC: Spring and PAS1 now provide.

The championship follows the same logic. The PGC has 32 places: eight for the best teams in the PGS Points standings, and 24 for the top teams of the year's Regional Series, shared out by region. When the roadmap came out, Krafton said the details of the regional points system would follow.

What happens next

Registration is open on the dedicated competitive platforms of each series, and both competitions have their own community servers for updates. The first scrims are played on Monday, March 2.

Viewers will see almost all of it. Every PEC and PAS tournament is broadcast from start to finish, Krafton says, except the first two days of scrims each week, and the broadcasts will carry more G-Coin giveaways. The five weeks of Cups then decide who reaches the first Playoffs on April 17, and the results of PEC: Spring and PAS1 decide which teams from the two regions are invited to the August circuit of the PUBG Global Series.

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