Hey everyone! We at the NISEI Organized Play team are excited to share some information regarding the state of Organized Play in 2021 as well as some information on this year’s World Championship.
Regionals
After some deliberation, we have decided that there will be no Regionals season in 2021, and as such there will be no opportunity to win first-round byes for Nationals or Continentals. Byes awarded in previous years will still be valid!
Nationals
We have not yet made a final decision regarding if there will be National Championships this year. It does not seem likely that they will be able to be held safely all around the world, so we are currently leaning towards cancelling Nationals season for 2021.
Continentals
Continentals are still on and will be online-only events, similar to 2020. The prize schedule for the main events will include some of the harder to earn prizes from last year as well as plenty of all-new prize support! Keep an eye out for the full announcement coming soon.
Worlds
And finally, the information that everyone is eager to hear! We in NISEI Organized Play are hard at work planning the 2021 World Championship.
The first thing to mention is that we are delaying the event until November 2021 instead of October—we’ll explain why below.
We want very badly to host an in-person event in Toronto, but we recognize the chances of that being possible and safe are not looking great. If there is one thing that the last few years have taught us all, it’s that the future is unpredictable and nobody knows what the world will look like in November, so we are currently planning to run an online-only event as we did last year.
With that said, a live event is not necessarily out of the question. We can assure the community that we absolutely will not commit to an in-person event unless we are convinced that we can do so safely. As such, a second Worlds announcement will follow in August, three months before the event, wherein we make our final decision. Exact dates, prize schedule, ticket sales, and more will be announced at that time, and the three-month window will give players time to book time off and secure travel arrangements if there is an in-person event.
In August, the NISEI team will consider the state of the world at that time and decide if we will be hosting an in-person tournament or an online event. Here are some of the criteria for our decision:
- Rate of vaccination worldwide and in Ontario, Canada
- Community spread and virus trends worldwide and in Ontario
- Travel restrictions; we want ~90% or more of our expected attendees (based on data from previous World Championships) to be able to legally travel to Canada from their country
- Local laws and restrictions on indoor events in Ontario
- Community opinion and feedback
If we are satisfied with all of these criteria in August, we will host an in-person World Championship in November. If not, then we will run another online event and keep our fingers crossed for 2022.
As mentioned above, the opinion of the community matters to us in making this decision, so please give us your feedback! Click the button below and let us know if this is a decision that you support.
We appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate these uncertain times, and we look forward to bringing you the exciting Organized Play events you love!
