📝 What is Overwatch Collegiate? A guide to OWC ahead of Spring 2026

With Spring 2026 Overwatch Collegiate approaching, let's break down what OWC is and how it works this semester.

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Quick disclaimer: This story will only discuss the history and format of the official OWC tournament that Blizzard helps run. There are dozens of third-party leagues across the collegiate esports system, with several top-level teams competing in many of them. For the sake of keeping this story from being a million words, this article won’t go into detail about these leagues, but may reference them throughout.

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OW Collegiate origins:

Overwatch has been running a collegiate circuit since the 2016-17 school year with the “Tespa Collegiate Series.” All accredited universities, colleges, and post-secondary education schools from the United States and Canada are allowed to enter, as long as the students are taking the required number of classes that semester.

This event began with a regional group stage, which was split between four regions – North, South, East, and West – and ended with the University of California, Berkeley defeating the University of Toronto in the national championship at the Price Center in San Diego, CA.

OWC typically has two seasons across the school year:

• Overwatch Collegiate Homecoming, which is played during the fall semester, is typically viewed as the less impactful season.
• Overwatch Collegiate Championship Series, which is played during the spring semester, is viewed as the true “national championship” by most in the collegiate community.

Tespa, which operated in Blizzard’s Irvine, CA offices, continued to operate the collegiate circuit every school year through the Fall 2020 semester, until Blizzard ended the partnership ahead of the Spring 2021 season. The tournament continued to hold its national championships on LAN through the Spring 2019 season, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to shift fully online the following semester.

The tournament’s format eventually shifted from regional qualifiers to a national Swiss stage, allowing for a much simpler first stage.

After a few seasons with Raidiant as the operator (which operates the Calling All Heroes circuit), there was no collegiate season during the Spring 2025 semester. The sudden disappearance of the tournament sent shockwaves through the collegiate scene, with several “blue blood” schools dropping Varsity support for the game (including the University of California, Irvine, and Maryville University).

But during the summer of 2025, it was announced that the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) would take over as the tournament operator starting the 2025-26 school year, which brings us to where we are now.

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Current Overwatch Collegiate structure:

The Fall 2025 OW Collegiate Homecoming (OWCH) season brought a renovated format with the transition to NACE, creating two separate avenues of competition.

OWC Open was very similar to the traditional collegiate format, with 10 rounds of Swiss stage leading into a bracket stage with the top 16 teams. But unlike some OWCH seasons prior, the knockout stage was single-elimination throughout, instead of double-elimination starting at the Top 8.

The $42,000 prize pool last fall was spread across the Varsity and Open divisions, with $28,000 for the Open bracket and $14,000 for Varsity.

The Illinois State University Redbirds – who have since disbanded ahead of the Spring 2026 season – battled through the bracket to win the title 4-0 against Fisher College.

The addition to the OWC this school year is the OWC Varsity division, which is exclusive to schools that are NACE members and have a stricter set of regulations. All players must compete in person at the school with a certified staff member monitoring the area.

ISU also took the OWC Varsity crown last fall over St. Clair College in a 4-2 win.

For this spring’s OW Collegiate Championships, there are some slight changes from the previous semester. The prize pool has more than doubled, with $100,000 in prizing spread across both divisions. Open kept the largest prize at $25,000 for first, while the winner of the Varsity division will earn $10,000.

The OWCC Open tournament will feature nine rounds of Swiss and will include the new “superweekend.” The first three rounds of Swiss will be played on Thursdays starting February 19, with the final six rounds on the weekend of March 7-8.

32 teams will qualify for the playoffs in a mixed-elimination format. The rounds of 32 and 16 will remain single-elimination and will be played back-to-back on Friday, March 13. We then swap back to the traditional double-elimination format, with games resuming March 14-15 until we have our grand finalists. The Grand Final will not be played until the weekend of April 23-26 during NACE’s championship LAN event.

Meanwhile, OWCC Varsity remains relatively unchanged from the OWC Fall Varsity tournament, with the exception of the NACE LAN to cap off the year. The regular season begins on Monday, February 2, with seven weeks of games leading into the first stage of the playoffs for the top 32 teams across all of the OWCC conferences. There will be two rounds of the single-elim play in late March and early April, with the top eight teams also qualifying for the NACE LAN.

The exact format of the playoffs at LAN and the event’s location have not been publicly announced as of the time of posting.

So how can you follow along?

Similar to last fall, there will be streams on the OW_Esports Twitch and YouTube for certain parts of the tournament. As of now, there will be streams for the entire OWCC Open playoffs, as well as the games at the OWC LAN, on the OW_Esports Twitch and YouTube channels.

According to the updated collegiate roadmap that was announced as part of the 2026 OW Esports outlook, the OWCC Varsity playoffs before LAN will not have an official stream.

OWTV will continue to bring collegiate content throughout the entire spring semester, including a winter transfer window recap and previews for OWC Varsity and Open.

You can also follow the Overwatch Collegiate Ranking Association through X and Discord, which ranks the Top 20 teams in the scene every two weeks.

I will also be posting weekly recaps on my social media, which will cover all of the major collegiate leagues rather than just the official OWC circuits.

Strap in, we’re in for a very long and unpredictable season.