How the Rainbow Six Seasonal Series ladder works for amateur teams

Most Rainbow Six Siege players will never hold a place in a regional league or walk onto a Six Invitational stage. For them, the competitive game starts somewhere else: a weekend queue, a leaderboard that resets every week, and a small prize pool shared among the best teams. That is the Seasonal Series, the open amateur competition Ubisoft runs season after season in each of its regions, on PC and console.

Ubisoft announced its Autumn 2026 edition on September 24, and its first ladder weekend opens on Friday, October 2. This guide explains how the series is built: where it sits in the game's competitive structure, who may enter, how a ladder weekend is scored, how the eight best teams are chosen, how the Seasonal League and the Seasonal Finals are played, what the rules demand on anti-cheat and conduct, and how the prize money reaches the players. Every rule comes from Ubisoft's announcements and from the Seasonal Series rulebook, in the version updated on September 22 for the new season.

Ubisoft's Autumn 2026 Seasonal Series announcement of September 24, 2026, and the Seasonal Series rulebook as updated on September 22, 2026.

An open circuit below the pro leagues

Rainbow Six Siege esports has a pyramid. At the top sit the regional leagues that Ubisoft runs with the organizer BLAST, the Majors and the Six Invitational, which Ubisoft calls the biggest and most prestigious event of its calendar and where 20 teams play for the title of World Champion. One step down is the Challenger tier, where teams fight for promotion into those leagues. The Seasonal Series sits underneath all of it: a competition anyone can join with four friends and a linked account.

The difference shows in how the Challenger tier works. Ubisoft's Challenger Series 2026, announced on January 20, opened with four public qualifiers in February and March. A Swiss stage of 16 teams followed, some of them seeded directly on their 2025 results, in a format that pairs teams with similar records round after round. The best eight then played a single-elimination final phase. Its two Grand Final teams, Ubisoft said, would automatically qualify for both stages of their regional league in 2026. A place in a professional league was the prize.

The Seasonal Series offers something else. It promises no league place and no promotion. It offers regular, organized matches with a leaderboard, a season that ends in a broadcastable final, and cash and in-game currency for the best teams. Ubisoft's announcements describe open ladder weekends followed by a league and a finals weekend, and its Summer announcement stressed that PC and console players alike can face each other in it.

The rulebook also keeps the two levels apart. It bars any team from rostering a player who belongs to a team taking part in a BLAST R6 Regional League, so the ladder is played without the league professionals.

Year 2: what changed in the summer

The Seasonal Series is in its second year. Ubisoft relaunched it on June 18, 2026, calling the Summer edition the second consecutive year of the competition, with play starting on June 26. It kept the system inside Challengermode, the tournament platform that hosts the matches, but rewrote the format and the rules. The rulebook's change log dates the Year 2 overhaul to June 16, with a further entry on June 21.

The changes made the structure simpler and longer. Ubisoft removed two layers it had run in the first year, the Promise Division and the Contenders League, and lengthened the open stage from four weekends to five.

The prize money moved as well. Ubisoft said the pool had been increased to €6,400 for each region, each season. For Autumn, the format stays exactly as it was in Summer. Only the split of that money between places was redrawn, and Ubisoft put it plainly: "For Autumn, the distribution has been refreshed while keeping the same overall amount."

Regions, hemispheres and sign-up

The series runs as separate regional competitions, each with its own ladder, league and champion. Its seasons follow the calendar of each hemisphere, so the same months carry two names. In June, Ubisoft ran a Summer season in Europe/MENA, North America and Asia, and a Winter season in South America and Oceania. The September cycle repeats the logic: Europe/MENA, North America and APAC North play the Autumn Seasonal Series, while South America and Oceania play a Spring season.

Teams enter through the regional space that BLAST R6 runs on Challengermode. There is one space for Europe/MENA, one for North America, one for South America, and a shared one for APAC North and Oceania. Each team must subscribe to its region's space, and every player must link the Ubisoft account used in the game to a Challengermode account. Ubisoft asks players to read the rulebook before their first matches, and points them to the BLAST R6 space on Challengermode.

The rulebook also sets default game servers for each region: EU Central or EU West for Europe/MENA, Central US first and then East-2 for North America, the Japanese and north-east Asian servers for APAC North, Asia South East for the Asia region, Australia East for Oceania and the Brazilian server for South America.

Who may enter

The entry rules are short and strict, and the age floor comes first.

Multiple accounts are forbidden: a player who has created, held or used several accounts on the platform is disqualified from the event and may face further penalties. Names may not look similar or identical to those of the organizers' staff, and a team may carry an organization's tag only when it officially represents that organization in the Seasonal Series.

Residency is the rule that shapes rosters most. In the rulebook's words, team rosters must consist of five players resident in the regions they participate in, and the text refers to the BLAST R6 rulebook on the same point. Region hopping, moving to another region's competition, is strictly forbidden throughout the series. An exception needs three months of documented residency and an admin's approval.

Coaches and managers cannot register on the platform as staff, and they may not be used as substitutes unless the admin team approves them to play. A player may also appear for only one team in a phase, and a change of team needs an admin's approval.

Rosters: a social team for the ladder, a fixed five for the league

The ladder is built for groups of friends whose line-up changes from night to night. During the qualifier weekends, a team may register what the rulebook calls a social team, of up to ten players, and choose any five of them at the start of each matchmaking session. Between the second and the third weekend, a team may make one roster change of a single player. Nothing may change during an active weekend.

The Seasonal League is stricter. A team brings five players and up to two optional substitutes, and only one player may change between the qualifiers and the League. From the round robin to the Finals, the roster is frozen. A substitution has to reach an admin at least 60 minutes before a best-of-one match, or before the first map of a best-of-three, naming who leaves and who comes in. A stand-in, a player brought in from outside the roster, is allowed only in an emergency and with an admin's approval.

Matches are played five against five. A match four against five can go ahead only if the opposing team explicitly agrees.

How a ladder weekend is scored

The heart of the series is the open stage, which the rulebook calls Phase 1. In Autumn 2026 it runs over five weekends: October 2 to 4, October 9 to 11, October 16 to 18, October 23 to 25, and October 30 to November 1. Each weekend runs from Friday to Sunday, and on each of those days the queues are open for five hours, from 5 PM to 10 PM. The rulebook tells players to check their local time zone on the platform.

Within those hours, a team plays as many matches as it wants. Every match is a best-of-one, a single map. When the queue finds an opponent, the team has one minute to accept. A team that plays a lot is not rewarded for volume, only for its best results. The rulebook's rule fits in one line: "Only your 5 best weekend performances count towards your weekly results."

The weekend scores then feed the season. The leaderboard resets every week, and a team's final standing after the fifth weekend is the total of its three best weekend scores. A team can therefore miss two weekends, or play two badly, and still finish near the top. After the fifth weekend, the top eight teams of each region move on.

Ties on the leaderboard are broken in a set order. First comes the total of the three best weekends, then the fourth-best weekend, then the fifth-best, and finally the number of matches played in the best cumulative results.

Match procedure on Challengermode

Each match follows a procedure run by the platform. After a coin flip, the map veto, the process by which the two teams remove maps until one remains, is automated. In a best-of-one, the teams take turns to ban eight maps and play the one left. In a best-of-three, the order is ban, ban, ban, ban, then one pick for each team, two more bans, and a deciding map. Each choice has about 30 seconds before the platform makes it automatically.

The map pool holds nine maps: Bank, Border, Chalet, Clubhouse, Fortress, Kafe, Lair, Nighthaven Labs and Villa. Lobbies can be set up with the game's Pro League playlist. The two teams decide between them which one hosts the match, and the match must start within 15 minutes of the veto. Wasting time is penalized.

Inside the match, the rulebook sets limits a casual player would not meet in a normal game. Ping is typically capped at about 120 milliseconds, and a team whose player stays over the limit for more than one round is disqualified. Each team has one rehost per map, a restart of the lobby for a technical problem, allowed before the preparation phase or in the first 30 seconds of the action phase if no damage has been taken. Each team also has one tactical timeout of 45 seconds per map. Pauses need both teams' agreement or an admin ticket.

Some cosmetics are restricted. Drone and gadget skins are banned, while weapon skins, charms and background cards are not limited. Default operator skins and branded esports sets are allowed, apart from one legacy set the rulebook names. Breaking the cosmetics rule leads to a warning, then a round loss, then a map loss, each offense verified by admins. The rulebook also lists which tricks with the map are allowed and which are banned, and a banned one carries an immediate round loss, and possibly further sanctions, when it is reported.

After the match, a captain or a player uploads a screenshot and enters the full round score. Valid scores run from 7-0 to 8-7, and an overtime result is flagged with a separate toggle. If only one team enters a score, it is confirmed automatically after seven minutes. A false or incorrect report can lead to removal from the queue. Only a captain may declare a forfeit, which counts as a 1-0 loss.

The Seasonal League and the Seasonal Finals

The second phase is the Seasonal League. Its eight teams play a single round robin over one weekend: each team meets each of the seven others once, in a best-of-one, which makes 28 matches in all. In Autumn 2026, the rulebook schedules rounds one and two on Friday, November 6, from 7:30 PM, rounds three to five on Saturday, November 7, from 6 PM, and rounds six and seven on Sunday, November 8, from 6 PM.

The League uses a points table that rewards a win in regular time over a win in overtime, the extra rounds played when a map is level at the end.

Teams level on points are separated by their head-to-head result, then by games won, then by round difference. The top six move on to the Finals. The two teams eliminated are not sent away empty-handed: the rulebook keeps them eligible for part of the prize.

The Seasonal Finals close the season over the following weekend. The rulebook schedules four matches on Saturday, November 14, and on Sunday, November 15, a match for third place followed by the final. Ubisoft's two texts describe the bracket in different terms. The announcement of September 24 says the top two League teams receive advantageous seeding into a best-of-three, double-elimination bracket, in which a team is out only after a second loss. The rulebook describes a single-elimination weekend with one round of advantage for the top two, and best-of-three finals. Both agree on the essentials: six teams, a head start for the two best League teams, best-of-three series and one Seasonal Champion per region.

Dates are fixed. The rulebook grants no rescheduling, with one exception: a confirmed clash with another official Ubisoft or BLAST R6 circuit tournament. Ubisoft also opens the League and the Finals to community casting, with an application form for casters who want to cover them.

Anti-cheat, conduct and sanctions

An open competition on PC and console needs its own checks. The rulebook requires BattlEye, the anti-cheat built into the game, and MOSS, a monitoring program that records a player's system during a match. On PC, MOSS must record every match, and the files must be kept unaltered on the player's computer for the whole series. A team that cannot provide them is disqualified. The rulebook puts the burden on the participants: it is their responsibility to make sure MOSS is installed and working before an event starts.

Console players are checked differently. The admin team may ask them for evidence, at random or systematically depending on the situation, and failing to provide it leads to the disqualification of the player or of the whole team, depending on the phase.

The sanctions for cheating reach the whole roster. A team with a confirmed cheater is banned from Seasonal Series events immediately, for at least the current edition and up to a year. Its other players face a 12-month suspension, which may be reviewed after three months. VPNs and similar tools can lead to instant disqualification. Two connection-routing services, ExitLag and GearUp, are allowed only with an admin's approval in advance, and unapproved use disqualifies the team.

The rulebook bans spawn-killing, defined as a kill in the first two seconds of the action phase, as well as deliberate team-killing, throwing a match, match-fixing and stream sniping, watching an opponent's live broadcast to gain information. Insults, racism, hate speech, threats of violence and sexual harassment are strictly penalized. The scope of punishment varies and may include fines, on top of any sanctions applied to the player's Ubisoft account.

Disputes go through a ticket on Discord, opened only by the captain or one designated contact, with the match lobby link and the evidence attached. A claim of cheating without evidence is dismissed, and abuse of the ticket system is itself sanctioned. Admins have the last word and may make exceptional rulings to protect fairness.

How the prize reaches the players

The pool of €6,400 per region and per season is paid in two currencies: cash and R6 Credits, the premium in-game currency of Rainbow Six Siege. Part of it is paid along the way. When Ubisoft launched the Summer edition, it said the top two teams of each weekly ladder would receive prizes and the top three would receive R6 Credits. The rulebook's change log records an update to the conditions of the weekly credits on July 13.

In the current text, a team that earns weekly credits receives five of them, delivered as soon as possible to the five players of its main line-up, to the five who played the week's best-scoring match, or to the captain, who shares them out within the team. The credits are redeemed through the game's activation system on Steam or Ubisoft Connect.

Cash goes to each eligible player individually, through their own Challengermode account, between 45 and 90 days after the final match of the event. Substitutes are not eligible for the cash prize. Players must follow the regulations of their country of residence on prize money, which differ from one country to the next. The R6 Credits tied to a team's final placement arrive by direct message on Challengermode within 30 to 90 days.

The rulebook also sets out how a team can lose its share. A forfeit or a no-show in most of a team's Seasonal League matches, or in any match of the Finals, removes its eligibility for the prize money and the R6 Credits tied to its final placement.

The .esports registry publishes Esports Observer, so the whole scene can read its news for free.