For some pro teams, the road is long and grueling, as they’ll be fighting off fierce competition to face the best of the best for year four in the Apex Legends Global Series. The invites have been sent, but who are the lucky few that get to skip the qualifiers and head straight into the pro league split one playoffs? Some of these names may surprise you.
On Oct. 14 Zac Conely, ALGS League Ops Manager and pro players took to Twitter to announce their invite to the ALGS split one playoffs for year four. Powerhouses TSM, FURIA, LG, and MST unsurprisingly appear on the invite list. But what new names and rosters are being brought into the fold? New teams with veteran rosters The Dojo, DNO, Already There, Team o7, Team GREGGS, and Upper Moon were added to the invite list too.
The five tournament tiers for the ALGS are as follows: Challenger circuit, qualifiers, pro league, playoff, and championship. The Y3 championship was the most intense and entertaining Apex tournament to date with only a few Apex giants participating. With every year of the ALGS, the bar gets higher.
Who would have thought the reigning champions and match-point annihilators TSM would be invited to split one playoffs? Everyone, of course, and while their announcement comes as no surprise, other household names were officially released on Battlefy. Powerhouses Dark Zero, XSET, and Alliance join the invite list, alongside OXG, E6, 100T, Aurora, FNATIC, PVX, Enter Force.36, GoNext, VEXED, Aurora, and many more.
Other teams previously confirmed on Twitter to return to split one playoffs are Realize, Meat Lovers, Phoenix Legacy, and Sentinels. Stand-out teams who performed incredibly well at the ALGS Y3 championship like APAC South teams BLVKHVND and Dream Fire, and NA’s Optic Gaming are also confirmed to return to the ALGS on Battlefy.
The most interesting thing about these invites is the sheer number of excellent pro players that are not currently part of a pro team. But big names like scuwry and K4shera have received a personal invite to ALGS Y4, while others like sweet and Nafen are invited as ex-NRG on Battlefy. Another important name to note is ex-FaZe with their recent merger as they appear on the official invite list.
A ton of pro players have moved around their region because of rostermania. These switched rosters include Pulverex (former FC Destroy), FNATIC (former Northeption), MajorPushers (former Aurora), 2R1C (former Entropiq), and Infinite (former LCDF), who are used to the pro league pressure.
There will be 23 NA teams, 22 EMEA, 23 APAC North, and 21 APAC South teams confirmed for Y4 split one pro league where up to eight teams can qualify in preseason. Probably the biggest shock of all is that no invitation has been sent to E8 or Nickmerc’s team, TRIPODS.
TSM Manager, Minustempo speculated the decision to send TRIPODS through preseason qualifiers is to boost the viewership for Y4. These NA teams will have to battle it out and survive through qualifiers to meet their Apex rivals once again for Y4.
Update Oct. 23 1:23pm CT: This article has been updated with the full list of invited Pro League participants according to Battlefy.