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Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG replaces cancelled 2022 World Championship with regional tournaments

Territorial championships will be held in North America, Europe, Central America, Oceania and South America this summer.

Image credit: Konami

Yu-Gi-Oh! will hold a series of regional tournaments this summer in place of the trading card game’s cancelled World Championship 2022, Konami has announced.

This year’s World Championship was cancelled at the end of last month, with Konami saying the decision had been made “in light of the current global situation”. The cancellation marks the third consecutive year that the World Championship has not been held in person, with the 2020 and 2021 events explicitly cancelled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the time, Konami said it would hold “various in-person and Remote Duel events for our Yu-Gi-Oh! Titles” instead of the World Championship, but did not confirm further details.

Cover image for YouTube video

The publisher has now revealed that those replacement events will take the form of territorial championships held in regions around the world this summer. In addition to the main TCG tournaments, each territory will also host a Dragon Duel Championship - Yu-Gi-Oh!’s competitions for younger players born after 2007.

The championships will be held in the TCG’s main territories of North America, Europe, Central America, Oceania and South America. National championships will determine a national winner from each country in the region, who will then be able to participate in the overall regional championship.

The Central and South America championships will be held in Mexico City and Chile’s capital Santiago respectively in June.

They will be followed by the North American event, which will take place in Rosemont, Illinois from July 16th to 17th. Dates and venues for the Europe and Oceania championships are yet to be announced.

To reflect the changes to the World Championship this year, Konami confirmed that it would adjust the entry criteria for the 2023 World Championship. The playoff will be increased to 32 players, comprising the top 16 players from both the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. Any players who place in the top 16 in both seasons will see one of their entries passed down to the player with the next highest number of World Qualifying Points.

Konami previously announced its COVID-19 health and safety policy for in-person Yu-Gi-Oh! events, including the need for participants to display proof of up-to-date vaccination against the coronavirus. Alternatively, those with proven medical exemption from the vaccine can show a negative COVID-19 test taken within the last 24 hours. Face masks will be mandatory throughout the events.

This month saw the first in-person Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series tournaments in over two years, with the Charlotte, North Carolina event on April 9th and 10th and this weekend's YCS in Colombia capital Bogota marking the return of the regional competitions that usually serve as a lead-up to the World Championship. The next YCS event will take place in the Mexican city of Guadalajara between April 30th and May 1st.

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Matt Jarvis

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After starting his career writing about music, films and video games for various places, Matt spent many years as a technology, PC and video game journalist before writing about tabletop games as the editor of Tabletop Gaming magazine. He joined Dicebreaker as editor-in-chief in 2019, and has been trying to convince the rest of the team to play Diplomacy since.

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