Trackmania is back, baby! After an exciting summer season that saw Alliance win their first championship in the franchising era, it is now time for the 16 best teams in the world to get ready for the All Star Championship. The tournament will be held on July 8-9.
The final steps ahead of the Trackmania World Championship are about to happen, with the All Stars Championship going down this weekend from July 8 to July 9! Spring All Stars and Summer Grand League champions Alliance are looking to defend their crown and to manifest their position as the best team in the world, while everyone else will look to steal the spotlight for themselves.
These 16 Teams Are Playing For The All Stars Crown
Reigning Grand League champions Alliance will have to defend their All Stars crown from 15 other competitors. The playing field is made up from the entire Trackmania Grand League playing field, consisting of popular esports brands like Berlin International Gaming, Gamers First, Into The Breach, Karmine Corp, SINNERS Esports, Team BDS and Grand League spring champions Solary.
The Trackmania Challenger League, the second division of the Grand League, will also send their top four teams. Along TMCL champions orKs GP Numelops, we will also see the teams of ALTERNATE aTTaX, Homyno Tsun and Sprout fight for the All Stars title. Qualified from regional tournaments are Pacific champions DXA Singapore, Turkish champions FUT Esports, North American champions AIR White and European champions Exalty B.
The participation of Exalty B is especially interesting since Exalty's main team failed to qualify as they missed the top four in the Challengers League playoffs. Nonetheless, their young prospects Mees 'Stufts' Jenema and Alexander 'Whizzy' Page will be keen to prove themselves on the biggest stage of their young careers.
How Does The Tournament Work?
The tournament format is the Swiss system, commonly used in Esports titles like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and real-world chess. In round 1, each non-TMGL team will be matched against a TMGL team. Afterward, teams with the same amount of wins will be matched against each other, with TMGL teams only facing each other if there are no other possibilities. Matches are played in the best of five-format, the maps are picked at match start.
Once a team wins three matches, they will qualify for the knockout stage. If a team loses three matches before they do so, they are instead eliminated from the tournament.
The knockout stage will be played in a single-bracket knockout format, using the best of three matches-format, each match consisting of a best-of-five like in the wiss stage. The winner of the knockout stage will be awarded with 30 World Tour points, with second place receiving 20 points instead. Third and fourth place will receive ten points, with the lower placed teams receiving a low amount of points depending on their placements.
Will Alliance Claim Another Trophy?
Alliance took the Trackmania scene by storm after they managed to win the All Stars Championship in spring. Later, they went on to dethrone the reigning champions Solary and ended the playoffs miracle run of Berlin International Gaming in the Grand Finals to take their first TMGL title in the franchising era.
While rookie Alister "Soulja" Adutwum also lifted the trophy for the first time, it was not the first Grand League win for his teammate Patrick "Mudda" Radisich, who has won the TMGL as a solo player in 2022. In the face of their success, it is only fair to assume they will once again give their best at the All Stars Championship in order to qualify for the World Championship as the top seed.
After a – for their standards – disappointing third place finish in summer, Solary will look to bounce back at the All Stars Championship. It would also not be surprising if 2016 world champion Thomas "Pac" Cole and five-time world champion Carl-Antoni "Carl Jr." Cloutiér wished to bounce back after a difficult All Stars tournament in spring that, to everyone's surprise, saw them finish in 16th and last place.
How Will The Players Adapt To The Ice Changes?
As the summer campaign was released in Trackmania 2020, Nadeo released a set of changes to the notoriously difficult ice surface. This is also relevant for the pro scene as multiple tracks, mainly the track "Frosty", are featuring ice. Nadeo announced that ice should generally be faster to drive on, while the recently discovered technique called 'ice wiggling' – you literally wiggle from left to right to accelerate faster – has been removed.
The Trackmania All Stars Championship will start on July 8, 2 pm UTC, and will be broadcast on the official Trackmania channel on Twitch. Don't miss it!