by EVE Online Team3:00pm on Friday 28th August 2026
Arena-enjoying capsuleers, the wait is almost over.
Tomorrow, Saturday 29 August, the first ships will enter the arena as Alliance Tournament XXII begins three weekends of preliminary competition, with the first match kicking off at 13:30 UTC on the Fenris Creations Twitch channel.
This year, 58 teams from across New Eden have signed up to test their pilots, theorycrafters, fleet commanders, and probably a frankly unreasonable number of spreadsheets against some of the best competitive PvP players in EVE.
And unlike previous years, everyone is going to get plenty of opportunities to fight.
Alliance Tournament XXII introduces a Swiss-style preliminary tournament, giving every participating team seven matches to prove they deserve a place among the final 16.
Rather than an early loss immediately sending a team tumbling towards elimination, Swiss pairings increasingly match teams against opponents with similar results as the tournament progresses. Win your early games and you'll find yourself facing other successful teams. Have a rough start and you'll meet opponents fighting their own way back up the standings.
It means more matches, more opponents, and considerably more opportunities for teams to recover from an early upset - while consistently successful teams will find the competition getting tougher around them.
After seven rounds, the top 16 teams in the standings will advance to the Alliance Tournament XXII finals, taking place on 31 October and 1 November.
As a quick recap: Every match can feature up to ten pilots per team, with captains constructing their lineups from ships carrying different tournament point values and staying at or beneath a 200-point limit. Once the countdown finishes, they have just ten minutes to turn hundreds of hours of practice, theorycrafting, intelligence-gathering research, counter-theorycrafting, and no doubt frantic last-minute fitting changes into a victory. Read the full rules and regulations here.
Expect everything from aggressive rush setups and heavy brawlers to long-range compositions, electronic warfare, logistics, drones, tackle, and whatever deeply cursed strategy somebody has been quietly hiding on Thunderdome (the tournament server) for the last few weeks… because this is the Alliance Tournament, making things weird and unpredictable means your opponent won’t know how to react. Or better yet... “how can my enemy know what I’m doing if I don’t?”
The preliminary tournament will run across six broadcast days over three consecutive weekends, with the first matches beginning at 13:30 UTC each day:
29 & 30 August - Preliminary Weekend 1
5 & 6 September - Preliminary Weekend 2
12 & 13 September - Preliminary Weekend 3
Every round will make the picture a little clearer. Early victories will put teams in strong positions, losses will make every remaining match increasingly important, and by the final weekend the fight for those last few top 16 positions should be very real indeed.
All of the action will be broadcast live on the Fenris Creations Twitch channel, with a crew of experienced EVE players, tournament veterans, analysts, commentators, observers, and other competitive spaceship enjoyers on hand to explain what's happening in the arena - and occasionally attempt to work out exactly what a team was thinking when ten unexpected ships appear on screen.
The goal is simple: whether you've spent weeks analyzing the point spreadsheet or you're tuning into an Alliance Tournament for the first time, we'll make sure you know what matters when the ships start exploding.
Of course, merely watching other people make difficult decisions isn't nearly as entertaining as making some questionable decisions yourself.
Throughout the broadcast, viewers will be able to use Twitch channel points to predict the winner of each match. Back the right team and you can build up your points, with opportunities to exchange them for SKIN rewards along the way.
So listen carefully to the analyst desk… or completely ignore them and vote for whichever team has the coolest sounding name - both are time-honored Alliance Tournament strategies.
There will also be Twitch Drops available each weekend of the broadcast featuring booster crates, SKINR materials and ship SKINs!
For the competitors, making the top 16 also puts them within reach of some of the rarest prizes in New Eden.
With the Amarr Empire sponsoring Alliance Tournament XXII, two new limited-edition ships await this year's highest-placing teams: the Herald and the Penitence. (Headphone warning: loud wubs)
The Herald is an electronic attack frigate based on the Sentinel, incorporating technology from the Retribution and Vengeance. The Penitence takes the Curse combat recon cruiser and combines it with heavy interdiction tech inspired by the Devoter. A total of 140 of each hull will ultimately be distributed among the top 16 teams, with the tournament champions taking home 40 of each. Explore the Alliance Tournament XXII prizes.
There are also Amarr Victory SKINs on the line for match victories, meaning every win across the tournament carries something worth fighting for (including the matches in the preliminaries!).
But before anyone can start worrying about the finals, there are seven rounds of preliminary matches standing between 58 hopeful teams and those coveted 16 positions.
Some familiar names will rise to the top. Some favorites will stumble. Somebody will unveil a composition nobody expected. And somewhere, almost certainly, a frigate pilot is going to survive with an absolutely unreasonable amount of structure remaining.
There's only one way to find out.
Alliance Tournament XXII begins Saturday 29 August, with the first match at 13:30 UTC.
Grab some Quafe, pick a team, spend those channel points irresponsibly, and join us live on the Fenris Creations Twitch channel.