Overwatch esports bootcamp kicks off at T1 headquarters

This year's Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS) circuit has kicked off its first-ever Pre-Season Bootcamp. It's taking place at the T1 Academy within T1's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea.

First announced during DreamHack Stockholm 2025, the Pre-Season Bootcamp is a program that helps chosen teams get ready for OWCS Stage 1. This program gives these teams early access to upcoming content, the new competitive build, plus a structured environment for daily scrims and collaboration. It also lets Overwatch teams exchange insights with fellow players and coaches from the competitive community in South Korea.

"The OWCS is kicking off this week with a bootcamp in Seoul before the full-season launch in March, concluding at the end of the year with the World Finals in China," executive producer Ben Bell said during the recent Overwatch Spotlight event.

In an exclusive interview with esports.gg, Sean Miller, the head of Overwatch esports, revealed what inspired the OWCS Pre-Season Bootcamp in the first place as well.

"Each program really does serve a purpose, right? Take the Pre-Season Bootcamp, for example. So when Nightmare beat Crazy Raccoon earlier this year in Hangzhou, it blew everybody's mind," Miller recalled. "And pretty quickly, we all went to investigate -- how did this happen? What we found was a lot of the teams will bootcamp, particularly if there's an event in Asia, in Korea, and it really seems to level up their game. And so when we talk about the Pre-Season Bootcamp, that's really trying to find this better regional parity -- help all people level up before the OWCS season starts."

In another exclusive interview with esports.gg, Craig Cheon, the esports product lead for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, revealed why Seoul was chosen for the program.

"Korea is the home of esports," Cheon said, noting the professional setups for all of the participating teams. "So they will have the opportunity to practice and have scrimmages in Korea with very minimum latency -- because Korea has a really good internet system. They will have a really good opportunity to practice with each other. Outside of that, Korea's culture will be really interesting for them."

As for the chosen teams, they are Team Liquid, Dallas Fuel, and Disguised representing the North America (NA) region, Twisted Minds, Virtus.pro, and Team Peps from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), Team Falcons, Crazy Raccoon, T1 representing Korea, plus Weibo Gaming and All Gamers Global from China. VARREL, meanwhile, is the invitational team from Japan.

The training from the OWCS Pre-Season Bootcamp leads up to a 12-team tournament at WDG Studio in Hongdae, South Korea. The matches for this event begins on Feb. 12 at 1 a.m. PT.

In terms of where to catch the esports action, fans can look forward to Ambush's Twitch stream or any of the official streams on Twitch, YouTube, and SOOP. This event features YouTube and Twitch Drops, too, including new Overwatch esports loot boxes, the 2026 OWCS Pre-Season Bootcamp spray, OWCS Pre-Season Gains spray, the OWCS Ashe plus Reinhardt Home and Away skins, and so on.

In addition to the OWCS circuit, 2026 features the return of the Overwatch World Cup (OWC) as well. This one is slated for BlizzCon 2026.

"But the OWCS isn't the only thing esports has cooking," game director Aaron Keller said. "With the return of BlizzCon in September comes another Overwatch World Cup. This tournament is a celebration of the global passion and sense of true community that you all bring to Overwatch."

That's all for now. Stick around on esports.gg for more Overwatch news and updates!