Who runs the 12 Call of Duty League teams in 2026, and under what name

A Call of Duty League team carries two names at once: a city and a brand. For the 2026 season, both moved. Teams left Atlanta, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, a French organization brought a team to Paris, and two long-standing names, Toronto Ultra and Minnesota ROKKR, disappeared. Esports Insider noted in November 2025 that Black Ops 7 is the first season of the league without any of the original team names that debuted in 2020.

Behind the names sits a less visible question: who actually holds each of the twelve places, and who runs the team day to day. In several cases these are two different parties, and the arrangements differ from one team to the next. This guide sets out the twelve teams of 2026, the renames and moves of the 2025 offseason, and the cases where holder and operator differ, as the teams and the press had described them by April 2026.

Dot Esports, December 2, 2025; Esports Insider, November 27, 2025; announcements of the teams concerned, September to November 2025.

Twelve places, each tied to a city

The Call of Duty League is Activision's professional circuit for its shooter. Dot Esports describes the 2026 season as a 12-team, city-based franchised league. A franchise, in this sense, is a permanent place in the league: a team holds it from season to season, with no relegation and no promotion from below. Each place is attached to a home market, and the team carries that city or region in its name.

The model dates from the league's creation. Esports Insider recalled, in its report on the FaZe move, that Atlanta FaZe joined in 2019, when Call of Duty moved to city-based franchises for the 2020 season. The twelve teams of 2026, as listed by Dot Esports, are Boston Breach, Carolina Royal Ravens, Cloud9 New York, FaZe Vegas, G2 Minnesota, Los Angeles Thieves, Miami Heretics, OpTic Texas, Paris Gentle Mates, Riyadh Falcons, Toronto KOI and Vancouver Surge.

Most are based in North America. Riyadh Falcons are the league's Middle East representative, Dot Esports noted, and Paris Gentle Mates give it a team in Europe. OpTic Texas enter the season as champions of 2024 and 2025, and host the first Major of the year in Dallas.

The city stays, the brand moves

Five of the twelve changed their name, their city, or both, between September and November 2025. The table lists them with what changed and when it was announced.

The renames followed a change in the league's naming rules. Dexerto reported in October 2025 that the league had relaxed its naming conventions, which left room for the KOI brand inside the Toronto franchise's identity. The new names share one formula: the city of the franchise and the brand of the organization behind the team, as in G2 Minnesota, Toronto KOI or FaZe Vegas.

Owning a place and running a team

A franchise place and a team are not always held by the same hands. The place is the right to compete in the league. The team is the operation built on it: players, coaches, staff, the brand, partners and events.

The table sets out the four teams for which a holder and an operator have been described in public. For the other teams, the published announcements name the team and its organization without describing any split between the two.

The first row is the simplest arrangement: one listed company owns the place and runs the team under its own brand. The three others each split the roles in a different way, and the sections below take them one by one, with the renames that brought them into view.

In the Call of Duty League of 2026, the name on the jersey tells a fan who runs the team, not always who owns the place.

Toronto KOI: one brand across three teams

On October 23, 2025, OverActive Media, the Toronto company that owns the franchise, announced that the team that had operated as Toronto Ultra would become Toronto KOI. The release presented KOI, Movistar KOI and Toronto KOI as one connected identity, and placed KOI among the world's top five esports organizations in audience size and engagement.

OverActive is a listed company, quoted on the TSX Venture Exchange in Canada under the ticker OAM, with its headquarters in Toronto and operations in Madrid and Berlin. Its League of Legends team, Movistar KOI, plays in the European league, the LEC, according to the release. Its chief executive, Adam Adamou, presented the new name in the release as a matter of belonging, and said Toronto KOI brings that spirit home and gives it a global stage.

The move had been coming for some time. Dexerto reported that Toronto's roster had already appeared as Movistar KOI at the 2025 Esports World Cup, because of a ruling on partnerships, and that Ibai Llanos, a co-founder of KOI, had said in 2024 that KOI would aim to bring its teams in the LEC, in Overwatch and in the Call of Duty League under one name. Neil Duffy, OverActive's chief commercial officer, said in comments carried by Dexerto that aligning the teams under KOI lets the company unite its global audience. The 2026 roster named by Dexerto is JoeDeceives, Insight and CleanX, all three returning, and the newcomer ReeaL. The team had first presented that line-up as its Toronto Ultra roster for 2026, before the new name was revealed.

The new name was revealed at a season launch party, where the team also showed its 2026 jersey, and the release announced new in-game team packs for Black Ops 7, due later in the season. In the online qualifiers for the second Major, the renamed team beat Paris Gentle Mates 3 to 0, Esports Insider reported on March 2, 2026.

G2 Minnesota: the operator's name on the jersey

Minnesota ROKKR became G2 Minnesota in October 2025. The Esports Advocate reported that G2 Esports first teased a team called G2 Berlin in a video, then revealed G2 Minnesota, keeping some of the ROKKR imagery such as its purple Viking helmet. The team's own account marked the change on October 20, 2025, with a one-line post: "Allow us to reintroduce ourselves."

The name follows a deal two years older. In December 2023, G2 took over the assets and operations of Version1, the organization behind Minnesota ROKKR, and its Call of Duty League franchise, The Esports Advocate reported. The owners of Version1, among them WISE Ventures, the investment arm of the Wilf family, and the entrepreneur and investor Gary Vaynerchuk, became shareholders in G2, and G2 received the operating rights to the franchise. WISE Ventures went on to lead G2's Series B funding round, with Tornante Company, Gary Vaynerchuk and G2's leadership team taking part, the outlet reported.

G2 Minnesota is therefore a team whose former owners became shareholders of its operator. It plays under a Minnesota name and the G2 brand, as the loosened naming rules allow.

FaZe Vegas: a slot owner and a brand owner

Atlanta FaZe moved to Las Vegas for 2026 and plays as FaZe Vegas, Esports Insider reported on September 19, 2025. The team had been in the league since its first season, and won the championship in 2021 and in 2022. Its 2026 roster pairs Simp and Drazah with Abuzah and 04, two players who came from the Vancouver Surge, after Cellium and aBeZy left in the offseason.

FaZe Vegas is a case of a shared operation. According to The Esports Advocate, the team is a joint operation of Atlanta Esports Ventures, which owns the league place, and GameSquare Holdings, the company that owns FaZe Esports. The place and the brand thus belong to two different companies, which run the team together.

The new city came with a large role. FaZe Vegas hosts the 2026 Championship Weekend at the Michelob ULTRA Arena, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, an arena of 10,000 to 12,000 seats depending on its configuration, The Esports Advocate reported on January 30, 2026. It is the first time the team hosts the event, and it also handles the production, with the support of sponsors and partners. Las Vegas had last staged the league's championship in 2023, at the Thomas & Mack Center, the outlet recalled.

Riyadh Falcons: from Paris to Las Vegas to Riyadh

The franchise that now plays in Riyadh has had three homes since 2022. The Esports Advocate traced its path: it began as the Paris Legion, owned and operated by c0ntact Gaming; in June 2022 it announced a move to Las Vegas for the 2023 season, and by September 2022 it played as the Vegas Legion. Team Falcons, a Saudi Arabian organization, bought the franchise place in late 2024, before the 2025 season, according to The Esports Advocate. Esports Insider described the same 2024 change differently, as a renaming that came through a partnership with Team Falcons.

On September 9, 2025, the Vegas Falcons became the Riyadh Falcons and moved their headquarters to Saudi Arabia. With the move came the signing of Cellium, a 2021 world champion who had spent nearly seven years with FaZe's Atlanta team. The team's post read: "Riyadh is our new home, and we're excited to bring on a World Champion with multiple trophies."

The Esports Advocate noted that the move makes Saudi Arabia part of a largely North American league. Riyadh had already hosted the game's professionals: the 2025 Esports World Cup, a seven-week event in the city, held major Call of Duty and Warzone competitions, the outlet recalled.

The Riyadh and Las Vegas moves came ten days apart. Esports Insider reported that FaZe Vegas was the second franchise to relocate once the Las Vegas place had opened with the Falcons' departure, so that Las Vegas kept a team while Riyadh gained one.

Paris Gentle Mates: Paris returns

Paris has had a team before, through the Legion, and has one again. Gentle Mates, a French esports organization, moved its Call of Duty League franchise from Los Angeles to Paris for the 2026 season, Esports Insider reported on November 27, 2025. The outlet referred to the franchise's previous name without giving it. The departure had been in the air for weeks: in its September 2025 report on the FaZe move, Esports Insider already noted that Gentle Mates had teased leaving Los Angeles for a rebrand in a new city. The organization had played the pre-season Monster Energy Launch Invitational under the name Still Orgless, finishing second to OpTic Texas.

The roster, revealed during a Gentle Mates broadcast on November 26, 2025, is Envoy, Ghosty, Neptune and Sib, all American players. The franchise had finished 11th in the previous season, with five wins and 26 defeats, and its best result had been a top-eight finish at the fourth Major in May. It won the first Major of 2026, beating OpTic Texas 4 to 3 in the final in Dallas, Esports Insider reported. Gentle Mates also hosts the fourth Major, in Paris from June 25 to 28, where all 12 teams play for a US$365,000 prize pool.

Vancouver Surge: an operator under contract

The Vancouver Surge is the case where the running of a team was handed out for a fixed period. On November 6, 2025, The Esports Advocate reported that XDOTG had signed an agreement with Canucks Sports and Entertainment to operate the Surge, the Canucks' Call of Duty League franchise, for the 2026 season. The financial terms were not disclosed.

XDOTG is an agency founded by Alex Gonzalez, a former chief marketing officer of Enthusiast Gaming. Gonzalez left Luminosity Gaming after Enthusiast sold that division, with related assets and its direct-sales operation, to Vertiqal Studios, and formed XDOTG with several former Enthusiast executives; the agency formally launched in September 2025. The agency is built on four pillars: talent, studios, culture and distribution. The Surge deal was its first major one, the outlet reported. XDOTG brought in three people from Omit, a second-tier Call of Duty and Warzone organization: Atura as head coach and general manager of the Surge, Kazbo as creative director and Swagchecked as brand manager.

The other teams of 2026

Among the seven other teams, some had changed shape before the 2025 offseason. The Carolina Royal Ravens were the London Royal Ravens until September 2023, when the team moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, The Esports Advocate reported in October 2024. It had considered Madrid, Mexico City and Washington DC as other destinations, and the outlet then described the franchise as owned by Infinite Reality. In October 2024 it signed a partnership with Carolina Gaming, a gaming media business, to build a regional commercial strategy for the 2024-2025 season: regional partnerships, marketing, community and brand development, with campaigns for the team's community both in the Carolinas and abroad. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Cloud9 New York was already the name of Cloud9's team in October 2024, when The Esports Advocate reported that Sony's INZONE brand would be the official monitor of the team. The outlet described Cloud9 New York as taking over the slot from the New York Subliners. Esports Insider describes the franchise as operated by Cloud9, a North American organization. On February 11, 2026, the team replaced its entire roster with four players from the Challengers circuit, Hide, Encourage, Nejra and Okis, after its previous line-up had won one of eight best-of-five series across the qualifiers and the first Major. Hide and Encourage came from the Stallions and Nejra from High Treason, all three top-24 finishers at the Challengers Open in Dallas, while Okis had played Fortnite from 2020 to 2025, Esports Insider reported. The new line-up was due to debut against G2 Minnesota on February 15.

OpTic Texas, Boston Breach, Los Angeles Thieves and Miami Heretics complete the field.

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