Call of Duty League 2025 season kicks off December 6th

If you’ve been curious on when the pros will start fighting it out for the Champs crown in 2025, I’ve got news for you. Daniel Tsay, GM of Call of Duty esports, dropped a video announcing the beginning of the year, with a smaller kick-off tournament on December 6. That will be followed up by the official qualifiers for Major I, which of course will start the year in full. There are some great sites for the LANs as well, with Madrid towering above all as an international tournament. Check out all the intel below!

Fresh off the record-breaking release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6®, we’re excited to announce that competitive Call of Duty® is finally back! The 2025 Call of Duty League® season kicks off with Opening Weekend on Friday, Dec. 6th. A new season of competition, opportunity and glory awaits. Last season, we saw OpTic Texas holding up the Championship trophy at the very end, but with refreshed rosters, new formats and incoming team franchises – it’s all up for grabs.

And let’s talk about those incoming team franchises. We’re thrilled to welcome Cloud9, Team Falcons and G2 to the CDL! G2 will have its first full season in the League this year as the Minnesota ROKKR, Team Falcons has formed the Vegas Falcons and Cloud9 has formed Cloud9 New York. These teams have been in the thick of Rostermania already and we’re excited to watch the imprint they leave on this League and the 2025 season. This is gearing up to be an epic one, so let’s get into the details…

CDL Season Circuit

Major I Hosted by Toronto Ultra
The kickoff of major tournaments for the 2025 circuit is primed for excitement as new teams, rosters and storylines have dominated this offseason. Toronto Ultra sends us to Europe for the first time since the inaugural season of Call of Duty League. Everyone, get your passports ready, the CDL is coming to Madrid.

Major II Hosted By OpTic Texas
OpTic Texas brings us back to the site of 2024 Championship Weekend for the second Major of the season. It worked out pretty well when they played in Dallas last time…can the Greenwall defend their title once again?

Major III Hosted By Miami Heretics
The Call of Duty League returns to the sunshine state for the third Major, asthe Miami Heretics host us in Fort Lauderdale. The playoff scenarios will be heating up so all eyes will be on this tournament.

Major IV
More details to come soon on the final Major of the season!

Competition Format Details

Qualifying Weeks
Each Major, there will be Online Qualifier weeks to determine seeding heading into the team-hosted LAN Major Tournaments. This season there will be four weeks of Online Qualifiers for Majors I & II, and three weeks of Online Qualifiers for Majors III & IV. In Major I & II Teams will play seven matches each and in Majors III and IV, they will play five matches each to determine tournament seeding.

Online Minor Tournaments
A new addition to the 2025 season, online Minor Tournaments are 12-team, single elimination tournaments held over three days. The 2025 Minor Tournaments will take place in the middle of the Qualifiers for Majors I and II and will add some extra excitement to the online portion of competition. These tournaments will be seeded by CDL standings at specific points in the season: Minor Tournament I will be seeded by the standings after the first two weeks of the CDL Regular Season while Minor Tournament II will be seeded by the standings after Major I concludes in Spain.

What are they playing for? Each Minor Tournament will have a $20K winner-takes-all prize pool and valuable CDL points at stake. 1st place will receive 30 CDL Points, 2nd place will receive 20 CDL Points and 3rd/4th Place will receive 10 CDL Points. These points will be used for Post Season seeding only, not Major Tournament seeding, but can make all the difference when it comes to the Postseason cutoff.

CDL Points
CDL Points up for grabs throughout the season will be similar to the 2024 season, with additional points being available for the Top 4 teams at each Minor Tournaments. For a full breakdown on how Teams earn CDL Points, visit the standings page.

Game Modes
The season will be played on Hardpoint, Search and Destroy, and Control game modes.

Challengers

We’re back with the 2025 Challengers Season and are kicking off the season in all four regions on November 23-24 with our first Challengers Cup. Elite is also back in North America and Europe with the first qualifier taking place on January 4-5, 2025. Additional information on the Challengers season can be found here. More details to follow on Opens and Challengers Finals.

2024 – 2025 CDL Regular Season Schedule*

We’ve got the FULL schedule lined up for the 2024 – 2025 season, so here we go!

Major I – Toronto Ultra

• December 6 – January 26: Online Qualifiers
• January 10 – 12: Minor Online Tournament
• January 30 – February 2: Major LAN Tournament

Major II – OpTic Texas

• February 14 – March 16: Online Qualifiers
• February 27 – March 2: Minor Online Tournament
• March 20 – 23: Major LAN Tournament

Major III – Miami Heretics

• April 4 – 20: Online Qualifiers
• April 24 – 27: Major LAN Tournament

Major IV – TBD

• May 2 – 18: Online Qualifiers
• Major LAN Tournament Details Coming Soon

*Dates and Locations Tentative.

Stay tuned to GamingTrend for more Call of Duty League news and info!

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: