The second Grandmasters Season of 2021 culminates on the Playoffs week! Top 8 players from each region are fighting over the coveted spots at the World Championship in December. You can find everything you need to know below.
This Week's Format
This year every week will follow the same tournament format, with only the gameplay format changing.
- Best-of-five Conquest.
- Two Dual Elimination groups with top 2 players advancing.
- The two top ranked players from each region get an automatic win for their first match.
- The 7th and 8th ranked players from each region get an automatic loss for their first match.
- Top 4 play through a single-elimination bracket to decide the winner.
For the entire competition format for 2021, check out the spoiler below.
Note that the section discussing gameplay format is no longer accurate. Weeks 2, 4, and 6 will be played using Last Hero Standing and every other week will use Conquest.
Quote From Blizzard Weeks 1-7: Weekly Dual Tournaments
During weeks 1-7, players will compete in a Weekly Dual Tournament format, starting each Thursday, to earn placement in the weekend Top 8 Stage. Players will receive points based on total number of wins each week, which will determine final standings before Playoffs.
- All 16 players in each region will compete against each other off-broadcast in Dual Tournament Group play on Thursday.
- On Friday, the 4 Decider Matches will be played to determine who joins the Top 8 per region, live on YouTube.
- The Top 8 players compete in a single-elimination tournament on Saturday, with the Top 4 advancing to Sunday.
- Gameplay format changes every other week:
- Week 1: Conquest
- Week 2: Conquest
- Week 3: Specialist
- Week 4: Specialist
- Week 5: Last Hero Standing
- Week 6: Last Hero Standing
- Week 7: Conquest
Week 8: Playoffs
The Dual Tournaments lead into Week 8 Playoffs, which will qualify one player per region to receive an invite to the World Championship at the end of the year, while four players from each region will be relegated.
- Top 8 players advance to Playoffs.
- Players 9 – 12 are safe from Relegation but are finished with tournament play for the season.
- Bottom 4 players in each region are automatically Relegated.
- The winner of Playoffs from each region are given a chance to compete in the 2021 World Championship. Season 1 champions retain their invites to the World Championship if they are not Relegated in Season 2. Relegated Champions have their invites passed down to the next eligible player, in their region, from Season 1.
This Week's Pack Drops
The pack distribution remains the same than last season:
- Grandmasters Week 1: United in Stormwind (max 2 packs)
- Grandmasters Weeks 2 - 7: Year of the Phoenix (max 2 packs)
- Grandmasters Playoffs: United in Stormwind (max 2 packs)
This week there are new packs for everyone - be sure to tune in for at least four hours!
Stream Schedule
You can find the starting times of each region's streams below. The schedule is the same each day.
West Coast PDT (UTC-7) | East Coast EDT (UTC-4) | Europe CEST (UTC+2) | Korea KST (UTC+9) | |
| Asia-Pacific | 2:00 | 5:00 | 11:00 | 18:00 |
| Europe | 7:00 | 10:00 | 16:00 | 23:00 |
| Americas | 12:00 | 15:00 | 21:00 | 4:00 |
You can find all the matches, results, and decklists on the official tournament site.
Asia-Pacific Grandmasters in Playoffs
Europe Grandmasters in Playoffs
Americas Grandmasters in Playoffs
Watch Live
You can watch all the action on the official Hearthstone Esports YouTube channel. Don't forget that you should be following the games on YouTube while logged in for those sweet pack drops!
Top 5 Moments with Darroch:
The Curve with Raven:
Hot Takes with TJ and Sottle:
(No new episode had been published at the time of writing.)
Mull It Over with Jia:
(No new episode had been published at the time of writing.)
Comments
I'm rooting for Alutemu, Gaby and Monsanto. All three players that have shown how amazing they have performed this season and deserve to go to World's the most.
Anyone got their packs yet? Been up here for 3 hours and not a single one.
Nothing yet. And I'm "watching" since APAC game 2 or so.
Just checked by logging into HS, no packs yet despite watching for a bit over 2.5 hours.
I've been watching streams for sixteen weeks (2 seasons) and still haven't received any packs :[
Are you certain your accounts are connected properly? If they look like they are, I'd disconnect and reconnect them if you haven't tried that.
I have connected and disconnected accounts many times :[
There's a handful of countries which are not eligible for the rewards as well, you can check the full rules for pack drops here. Haven't had any problems myself so I don't have any other ideas what the issue could be.
Thanks, but I'm from the "correct" region. You are lucky :] According to my survey, about a third of players have difficulty earning YouTube Drops.
I have received no packs from YouTube either despite trying different accounts, regions, different browsers, differenet computers, connecting/disconnecting many times. Blizzard support said (quite rudely) they can't help with this, and on YT there's no reasonable support at all
If anyone has any clues as for how to solve this, I'll be very grateful
The same thing! The communication with Blizzard support turned out to be a complete disappointment. This weekend I was watch streams using a VPN, it didn't help me. I used different devices, different browsers, different YouTube accounts :[