The Season 5 update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone is currently set to coincide with the Esports World Cup.
Season 4 debuted on May 29th, but faced heavy criticism due to unstable servers and the inclusion of unwanted ads.
The in-game battle pass timer states that Season 5 is scheduled to launch on August 7th.
This date aligns directly with the Call of Duty: Warzone tournament at the Esports World Cup.
The Call of Duty: Warzone tournament runs from August 6th to 9th at the event which is being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
This will raise questions among tournament participants and fans over whether the event will switch to Season 5 once the update goes live.
Organisers the Esports World Cup Foundation, has yet to clarify how the Season 5 update will impact the tournament.
The Warzone tournament will be one of the most anticipated events in the game’s esports calendar, as well as the Esports World Cup.
It will feature 21 top-tier teams across the globe, vying for a share of the $1m (£737,000) prize pool.
Last year’s event saw Team Falcons pick up the victory and the $200,000 (£148,000) winner’s prize with Fnatic coming out second.
The tournament will utilise the Resurgence format, which has featured in several tournaments already in 2025.
Matches in Resurgence see players redeploy into the match if remaining teammates are able to survive the countdown clock.
The length of the timer is reduced by completing in-game actions including moving around the map and scoring eliminations.
Call of Duty Season 4 receives criticism
While there are questions over Call of Duty Season 5 clashing with the Esports World Cup, fans of the franchise have recently seen the launch of Season 4.
The rollout of Call of Duty Season 4, which was launched on May 29th, was met with heavy criticism.
Players reported widespread server instability on Warzone and Black Ops 6, with frequent outages disrupting matches.
Additionally, the introduction of unwanted advertisements raised concerns from the Call of Duty community.
Developers addressed the issues on X stating: “Our team has been working diligently to resolve performance issues that players encountered following the initial Season 04 launch earlier today.
“On that note, we’ve decided to delay Ranked Play: Battle Royale while we work on bringing the experience back to its intended fidelity. We will provide updates on timing as soon as we can. We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”
Over the course of the weekend, the Call of Duty team worked to restore functionality with Ranked Play gradually reinstated in both Battle Royale and multiplayer modes. However, players continued to experience gameplay problems with intermittent server issues.
It is hoped that any remaining issues will be sorted before the World Series of Warzone makes its return later this month.
Kieran Lynch is an esports journalist who writes about several games including EA Sports FC 25, Call of Duty, Rainbox Six Siege, and more. He previously worked as a sports journalist for MailOnline.
