Challenger Series 2026

Every year between the Six Invitational and start of Regional Leagues, up and coming teams get an opportunity to play Challenger Series, a tournament where the relegated T1 teams and the best of T2 go against each other in an opportunity to secure their spot in the 2026 leagues.

It's a big deal in the calendar, it's the players I've been casting all year, and finally their opportunity to prove that they have what it takes. It's huge for me to see them competing at that level, and I know it means everything to them.

For the 2026 edition I wanted to bring my community coverage of the event to the next level. This is how I did it.

Laying the Foundations

For the Six Invitational Qualifiers a few months prior, I had rebuilt my dissertation application, TEBS, which was now repurposed for Siege X. This was my personal broadcasting tool, using web-based overlays to deliver dynamic information into OBS allowing me to create community casts with graphics and data that rival full-scale productions.

Many previous attempts at tools like this are built with casters as an afterthought, designed for production teams or quite simply don't have the features I need. By using my own system, I had full control over what features were available and developed a lightweight system that could easily be used and adapted. This system carried me through SI Qualifiers where I streamed from the BLAST studios in Malta, which was it's first true test.

Same Tool, Bigger Goals

Previous1 / 5Next

It worked like a treat, so naturally I adapted it for Challenger Series. The scope was bigger though, different regions with unique styles. To streamline the workflow, I decided to make my own style for my Challenger Series streams, going with quite a minimalist scheme and then adding each regional colour as accents.

The package came out well, it was certainly simple but achieved the goal. It was immediately identifiable that you were watching a specific regions' matches, but also different enough that my community streams stood out. The controller tool enabled theme hot swapping, in addition to new roster & map veto screens I'd added.

Not a One Man Army

While at the Six Invitational, I had the discussion to cast with Golumolu (right). He was an experienced colour caster with a lot of knowledge. For the first time I had a proper duo, and being able to sit down, discussing casts properly, what went well, what did/didn't work was really game changing. It was a long few weekends with a lot of air time, but because of the feedback and work we were able to put in together, I grew more in that month as a caster than I ever had before.

Naturally, everything we worked on also translated when I worked with other casters across the different regions. While me and Golu focused mainly on EMEA matches, I worked with many friends over CS 2026 trying to cover all of the different regions, from APAC to South America.

Off-Air Entertainment Too

A big challenge in Community Casts is the long breaks, you're often waiting on games to finish and in between matches there can be upwards of an hour to fill. We're obviously not on camera that entire time, and a common pressure point for viewers is being left on an intermission screen for ages. So I came up with the idea of 'Challenger Stories'.

The pitch of the series was simple: Interview people inside of the Rainbow Six Siege scene, those that have 'made it' and those that are working towards it, get their story. How they got into the game, favourite memories, biggest challenges and what they're looking forward to.

This form of content exists for T1, so was something I knew would be a successful formula, I just needed to bring the camera to others. I put out a post on Twitter and got such a variety of responses, from players and content creators, to organisation owners and talent. I was incredibly lucky to have such a diverse group of people wanting to talk to me.

The episodes were incredibly raw, didn't do a lot of editing other than trimming out some bloopers. Just myself and a guest talking through their story with Siege. It was also interesting for me, everyone had different paths to getting here, yet the common thread that they hang around for the community stayed, and that really stuck with me.

I would highly go and recommend checking out the full series on YouTube.

And it all came together...

Challenger Series was a lot of work, back to back weekends of 10+ hour broadcast days, I won't lie and say it was easy. However, when you get to see players that you've casted making it big and going to S-tier events (Like Rorick, pictured), its pretty cool to look back and know you played a very small part in that journey.

Ultimately, I setting up these streams and have a good time doing them, that's my main motivator, but the fact that people enjoy them and it brings this community together? That's just the cherry on top.