The UK Esports League (UKEL) has revealed the 2024 UKEL Sunshine Showdown, a summer season with a spicy format.
The UK and Ireland’s national League of Legends league has announced details and open qualifier sign-ups for the 2024 summer season.
The tournament follows a similar format to that of the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) with teams from the Spring 2024 Division 1 and 2 being invited directly to the group stage and play-ins respectively.
“In light of National Leagues within the NLC ecosystem not operating during the summer split, this tournament is considered standalone and so will have no impact on qualification for Autumn ‘24, and provide no qualification spots to NLC RPS (Northern League of Legends Regional Promotion Series),” the UKEL said in the below announcement.
“Don’t worry though, we’ve cooked up a fresh new format to provide a more exciting tournament and broadcast experience for players and viewers.”
As usual, teams need a minimum of three UK and Ireland Locally-Trained Representatives (LTRs) on their starting roster.
UKEL Sunshine Showdown open qualifier sign-ups close on July 8th, and matches will take place on Mondays and Thursdays from 6pm to 11pm BST.
Qualifiers start July 15th, the play-ins start July 22nd and the group stage is on July 29th, with playoffs starting on August 5th.
The grand finals will take place on August 22nd.
“The format we’ve gone with features multiple stages akin to the LoL World Championships, and this in turn allows us to experiment with some exciting new broadcast and content ideas!”
Synygy, UKEL
Alex ‘Synygy’ Winton, UKEL Founder & Operations Director, told Esports News UK: “Our 2024 Summer season has been designed to be more community and player enjoyment focused than our previous two seasons, where the priority is ensuring the best teams make it to NLC RPS.
“As there’s no RPS after the Summer split, we have the freedom to experiment with tournament formats that allow for more exciting storylines and hype moments than the usual league format does.
“The format we’ve gone with features multiple stages akin to the LoL World Championships, and this in turn allows us to experiment with some exciting new broadcast and content ideas!”
The UKEL returned almost a year ago, after an absence of almost two years. National leagues were scrapped in favour of the NLC having its own divisions, when Freaks 4U came on board as operator of the NLC in late 2021/early 2022. This led to the UK, Ireland and Nordics LoL esports community being up in arms over the closure of grassroots tournaments, and they were eventually reinstated.
The UKEL is one of five LoL national leagues in Northern Europe.
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.
