Ubisoft has announced the 2021 UKIN (UK Ireland Nationals) Rainbow Rumble, a multi-stage Rainbow Six Siege tournament featuring a £25,000 prize pot.
The tournament will take place over several months and promises to feature ‘hundreds of hours of top level esports action’.
The event begins on Saturday October 30th, where teams from across the UK, Ireland and Europe will take part in two qualifying tournaments over two weeks.
The top four teams in each qualifier will make it to the group stage.
Teams that meet the 3/5 UKI resident rule will have two chances to qualify on October 30th/31st and November 6th/7th. EU teams with fewer than 3/5 UKI residents will have a separate qualifier opportunity on November 6th/7th.
“With downtime after the Summer Season and players looking ahead to qualifying for the Challenger League in 2022, we want to give local players and teams the experience and opportunity to play in a competitive ecosystem and hone their skills against some of the best teams ahead of the 2022 competitive season.”
Will Attwood, Ubisoft UK
Then, in November, the group stage will take place. Qualified teams will play against teams that placed fifth to eighth in the UKIN Premier Summer 2021. Each group will be played on a single weekend day from November 20th to 28th.
Four groups of four teams will fight over four days, with the top two from each group making it through to the final knockout stage.
Taking place from January 4th 2022, the knockouts will be a 12-team, double-elimination bracket with the first to fourth placed teams from the UKIN Premier Summer 2021 automatically seeded into the second round.
All knockouts matches will be best-of-three until the final four, which will be played as best-of-five.
The winning team will win a special trophy designed in collaboration with the community.
All the gameplay will be broadcast from the group stage until the finals live on the Rainbow Six UK Twitch channel.
“We’re excited to bring the UKIN Rainbow Rumble to fans in the UK and Ireland as the next step in the UKIN ecosystem,” said Will Attwood, esports marketing manager for Ubisoft UK.
“With downtime after the Summer Season and players looking ahead to qualifying for the Challenger League in 2022, we want to give local players and teams the experience and opportunity to play in a competitive ecosystem and hone their skills against some of the best teams ahead of the 2022 competitive season.”
Navi won the UKIN earlier this year and in Summer.
Teams can sign up to UKI Qualifier 1 taking place October 30th/31st, UKI Qualifier 2 on November 6th/7th and the EU Qualifier on November 6th/7th.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
