Weekly Recall: Up To The Challenge

Have you ever stared longingly at the Top 500 leaderboards, wondering if you'd ever see your name next to those of Overwatch's most fearsome competitors? Whether you're just climbing out of Bronze or gunning for that coveted top-10 placement, it's important to dream big. In Season 20, we want you to dream even bigger.

The Challenger system is a massive update for the top tier of Competitive Overwatch, complete with a new scoring methodology, integrated social features, and compelling reasons to keep up the fight week after week.

Much like a 12-person fight on the payload with every Ultimate available, there's a lot going on with the Challenger update. We're here to walk you through the basics of the new system, how it'll change your Competitive experience, and why you should pay attention-even if you aren't hitting Grandmaster any time soon.

Introducing the Challenger Tier

The Top 500 leaderboard system is now the Challenger Tier and leaderboards will now show the 500 players with the highest Challenger Score. These leaderboards will be split by region and role (with a Combined board) as they've always been, with the addition of a Stadium leaderboard. Competitive Open Queue will also get the Challenger Tier treatment.

There's a minimum Challenger Score requirement you'll have to hit to show up on the leaderboards, but you can race to start racking up those points as soon as the season launches. No more waiting two weeks to see who made the Top 500 list!

The systems designers who engineered the Challenger system say these updates should make the Competitive scene more compelling and more competitive than it's ever been. Overwatch's top talents will now have to defend their throne against upstarts throughout the season, no longer able to rely on a first-week win streak to secure their place. The focus on gaining Challenger Score should make it difficult to maintain multiple alternate accounts to "camp" leaderboard spaces.

Score!

There's a lot of complex math going on in the background of this update, but the essential message of the Challenger system is an easy one: wins in Competitive mode (above Diamond 5 rank or All-Star 5 in Stadium) grant you Challenger Score "points" and losses will cost you some of that score. Your Challenger Score reflects how many points you've managed to acquire-and hold on to-over the course of an Overwatch season.

The Challenger Score you can earn per match varies and scales according to rank. Scores are awarded based on the highest-ranked player in the lobby, not your personal skill tier. The more difficult a match is, the bigger your reward for taking home the win. Check out the Season 20 patch notes to see the full numerical scores you can earn per rank.

Unlike wins, losses are calculated for your specific rank: you'll lose 33% of the Challenger Score amount you'd win at your rank on a loss. If you lose a match at Masters 3, for example, you'd lose approximately 16 points-a third of the anticipated win amount of 50 points. Losses are not affected by the ranks of others in the lobby.

The Challenger Score displayed on your Career Profile and (possibly!) on the leaderboards is a direct reflection of your Score during a season. But there's also a Combined Score and leaderboard that shows the sum of your role-specific Challenger Scores in both Core Competitive and Stadium. Say you have 500 Challenger Score in the tank role and 700 in the support role. Your Combined Score would then be 1200.

There are 9 total leaderboards (per platform and region) to set your sights on in Season 20: tank, support, damage, and Combined boards for Core Competitive and Stadium and a single leaderboard for Open Queue, which doesn't feed into any Combined scores. To get onto the inaugural Challenger Tier leaderboards in Season 20, you'll have to meet a few score-based and game-related requirements:

• Stadium competitors need to win 25 games to be eligible since leaderboards there are brand new, but all other Competitive mode enjoyers no longer need to win 50 games in a season to hit the leaderboards. You do still have to complete the Seasoned Competitor lifetime challenge to qualify.
• Endorsement Level 2 (or higher) is required. That's the default starting level for new players, so it shouldn't be a problem…if you're behaving yourself in matches.
• Role-specific leaderboards in core Competitive and Stadium require a score of 4000.
• Combined, Open Queue, and Combined Stadium require 5000.

Too Hot For You?

Gaining and maintaining your presence in the Challenger Tier is a marathon, not a sprint. Every week during a season, we'll be encouraging your progress-and maybe your last-minute dashes-with a Heat Bonus for Challenger Score. The amount of Challenger Score gained during matches will bump up by 5% per week for all competitors, leading to a whopping 40% bonus at the end of a typical nine-week season. Our developers have noted they're willing to tune this number if it ends up a little too spicy.

Streams, Dreams, and More

"That's a lot of hard work, Overwatch devs," you're probably saying to yourself while messaging the duo partner least likely to throw your games. "What do we get out of it?"

If you love when numbers go up (and who doesn't?) you'll be happy to hear that your Challenger Score will be prominently displayed in multiple places for ultimate bragging rights. We've also heard whispers about some exciting rewards that could encourage you to keep up the fight…but Vendetta told us we're not allowed to spoil those yet. And we're not gonna make her mad.

For content creators and those of you who love watching and learning from them, you'll be most excited about the social aspect of Challenger Tier leaderboards. Vetted creators will have links to their regionally relevant streaming services (Twitch and YouTube for most of the world and CHZZK in South Korea) attached to their leaderboard rankings. When your favorite streamer opens the game client, their listing on the leaderboard will show that they're live and ready to climb.

Creators and professional players get a chance to boost visibility as they climb the Challenger ladder while the rest of us gain an easier way to catch their streams. For safety reasons, this opportunity isn't open to just anyone: creators must be vetted by regional Community teams and must abide by a set of Community guidelines.

Chasing the Dream

A renewed look at the Top 500 system has been one of the community's most requested features, especially from creators and pros who felt there were few rewards for such a perilous climb to the peak of Overwatch competition. The Challenger update aims to make all that work worth it on a variety of levels, from boosting stream visibility to showing concrete numerical evidence of your upward trajectory. We'll even let you know how far you have left to climb with a calculation once you're nearing the Challenger Tier!

We adopted "Challenger" for this update to acknowledge that this overhaul wasn't intended to only benefit 500 people per region. Chasing the dream of hitting Challenger should be an aspirational goal for all skilled players to strive for if they're willing to put in hard work.

In 2026 and beyond, expect updates and enhancements to the Challenger system, including queue time Challenger Score bonuses, additional leaderboard features, and some fancy rewards we can't spoil just yet. Let us know how you feel about the changes-and how quickly you think you'll be able to hit Challenger-in the comments or on social media. Good luck!