The 2016 Overwatch World Cup was the inaugural ''Overwatch'' World Cup, an annual ''

Overwatch ''Overwatch'' is a multimedia franchise centered on a series of online multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video games developed by Blizzard Entertainment: '' Overwatch'' released in 2016, and ''Overwatch 2'' released in 2022. Both games f ...

'' esports tournament, organized by

Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three gradu ...

, the game's developer. It was the first of the series, and the final tournament took place at

BlizzCon BlizzCon is an annual gaming convention held by Blizzard Entertainment to promote its major franchises including ''Warcraft'', ''StarCraft'', '' Diablo'', ''Hearthstone'', ''Heroes of the Storm,'' and ''Overwatch''. The first BlizzCon was held ...

at the

Anaheim Convention Center The Anaheim Convention Center is a major convention center in Anaheim, California and is the largest exhibition facility on the West Coast of the United States. It is located across from the Disneyland Resort on Katella Avenue. The original com ...

from November 4–5, 2016. The final took place on November 5 between South Korea and Russia. South Korea won 4–0 to win the first World Cup title.

Teams

Players

Blizzard selected the top players from Season One of competitive play of Overwatch to possibly represent their country as a team member. Players with an Overwatch account and a region-specified Battle.net account then voted on who they would like to see on their respective country's roster. Over 3 million votes to decide national teams were cast.

Qualification

Throughout September 2016, fifty national teams entered to qualify for the Overwatch World Cup through best-of-three online qualifiers. Six teams automatically qualified for the group stages. In total, four teams from the Americas, six from Europe, and six from the Asia-Pacific qualified for the group stages of the World Cup. ;Invitation (6) * * * * * * ;American Qualifier (1) * ;Asia-Pacific (3) * * * ;European Qualifier (6) * * * * * * Overwatch World Cup 2016 Qualified Countries

Overwatch World Cup 2016 Qualified Countries

Group stage

The qualified teams were grouped into four different round-robin style groups, with the matches to be played in online. The top two teams in each group advanced to the knockout stage.

Teams

Players

Qualification

Group stage

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Tiebreakers

Knockout stage

Bracket

Awards

References

External links