Pathfinders, the women’s League of Legends tournament that debuted in May earlier this year, will return for more action in August and September 2023.
Projekt Gap, a UK-based esports events and broadcasts agency and organiser of Pathfinders, has today announced that the open qualifiers for Pathfinders 2 will take place on August 12th and 13th, with the main event taking place on August 19th and 20th.
Update: The groups have been announced for Pathfinders 2, with UK org Lionscreed, plus G2 Hel, Solary, BIG Chroma, Go Aurora, BDS Valkyries, Vitality French Bees and Galaxy Racer taking part.
The dates of the third event have also been released, with Pathfinders 3 open qualifiers on September 16th and 17th, and the main event on September 30th and October 1st. Sign ups will open over the coming days.
Taking on board player feedback from the first Pathfinders women’s League of Legends event, announced back in April and won by G2 Hel, organisers have revealed significant format changes for the next main event.
The weekend will now feature two four-team round-robin groups on the Saturday with the top two from each group progressing to a four team single elimination bracket (semi finals and finals) on the Sunday. All main event matches will be best-of-three games.
Pathfinders also later announced Logitech G as a partner:
In a press release, the team said they hope that ‘by continuing to organise such events, a proper spotlight can be cast on the Women’s League of Legends esports ecosystem, encouraging more players and organisations to take part. Such endeavours should incentivise more brands to invest into the ecosystem to connect with a young, hard to reach, target audience’.
Ali Rashid, Head of Product at Projekt Gap, commented: “Pathfinders 1 was a definite success, and there is a lot of room for improvement. We have been working closely with the teams and players to collect feedback on the event and to ensure that we keep working to build long lasting infrastructure to support the women’s scene.”
How did Pathfinders 1 do?
The Pathfinders women’s League of Legends tournament saw its debut in May this year, kicking off with an eight-team open qualifier event featuring teams including Rhaexis Divas Rosé, R3volt Infernal and Sea Pandas.
The main event took place, with the two qualified teams R3volt Infernal and Sea Pandas competing amongst partner teams, Vitality French Bees, G2 Hel, BIG Chroma, Galaxy Racer, QLash Midnight and Solary.
G2 Hel put on a dominant performance, winning both their quarter final and semi final games 2-0 before taking the grand finals in a 2-1 hard-fought victory against QLash Midnight, who have recently been acquired by Team Gamers Origin – now playing as GO Aurora.
“The support we saw on the first Pathfinders was incredible. It’s amazing to see the positive impact we are making for the scene and we’re extremely grateful for everyone who turned up to show their love.”
Pierre Silcock-Commerman, Projekt Gap
The Projekt Gap team has already stated that Pathfinders 1 surpassed all expectations, achieving over 900,000 impressions on social media across 45 days, 340 average viewers and 750 peak concurrent viewers on the Twitch live stream.
The co-streaming program also saw great results, with notable community members including VeteranEU, EUniverse and SolaryTV participating, increasing the reach of the event and bringing it to their communities.
Pierre Silcock-Commerman, Managing Director at Projekt Gap, said: “The support we saw on the first Pathfinders was incredible. It’s amazing to see the positive impact we are making for the scene and we’re extremely grateful for everyone who turned up to show their love.”
Signups for the next open qualifiers will be released in the coming days. More info can be found on the Projekt Gap website, in the official Discord, on Twitter, or by contacting [email protected].
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.
