Six Invitational 2025 preview: format, schedule and teams to watch

Taking place in Boston, United States, the Six Invitational 2025 sees 20 of the best Rainbow Six teams in the world compete at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway Park to be crowned world champion.

From February 3rd to the 16th, teams will also look to secure a lion’s share of the event’s $3m (~£2.4m) prize pool. Ahead of the event, here’s a guide highlighting everything you need to know about Rainbow Six: Siege’s biggest esports event of the year. 

The Six Invitational 2025 should feel familiar to many R6 esports fans, as the overall format has not undergone any major changes. However, this is still a significant event, as the competition is surprisingly making its debut in the United States. Previous Six Invitationals have taken place in Montreal, Stockholm, Sao Paulo and Paris. 

This year’s Six Invitational will also play its part in Rainbow Six Siege’s revamped 2025 esports ecosystem. Overall, 18 of the 20 R6 Share partner teams have been announced, with the final two set to be revealed in Boston. 

All Six Invitational 2025 teams qualified for the competition either through their global rankings or by winning their respective region’s last-chance qualifiers. For those unaware, the global rankings are determined by a team’s performance across R6’s regional leagues and two Majors, which took place last year in Manchester and Montreal. 

The top 16 teams are joined by G2 Esports (EMEA), RazaH Company Academy (Brazil), Oxygen Esports (NA) and CAG Osaka (APAC) who won their Last Chance Qualifiers. 

Global Standings are crucial to the Group Stage of the Six Invitational 2025 as it is used to seed the teams for the competition. Except for Brazil, which has five representatives, teams from the same region cannot be drawn against each other in the group stage. 

Similarly to last year, the Six Invitational 2025 Group Stage consists of four groups of five teams. All teams within the group will play each other once in a three-map series. 

Points will be given out depending on the result of the series: 

After the round-robin is finished, the top four teams in each group advance to the Playoffs with the last-placed competitors knocked out of the tournament.

Day 1 – February 3rd

Day 2 – February 4th

Day 3 – February 5th

Day 4 – February 6th

Day 5 – February 7th

Following the Group Stage, qualified teams will enter a double-elimination playoff bracket, with the winner being crowned Six Invitational 2025 champion. 

A team’s Group Stage performance has a significant impact on where they will be placed in the 16-team bracket. Those that finish fourth place in their groups will have the longest journey, starting in the Lower Bracket Round 1. As a result, these teams must win every game to stay in the competition. 

Teams that placed second and third will enter the Upper Bracket Round 1, meaning that these teams can afford to lose one series in the bracket. 

Finally, teams that won their respective Groups will gain a bye in the first round, entering straight into the Upper Bracket quarter-finals. All matches in the playoffs will be best-of-three (B03) except the Grand Final which will be a best-of-five (B05) series.

The playoffs will run from February 8th to its Grand Final on the 16th. For fans wanting to attend the event, the Group Stage and part of the playoffs are not open to the public. However, from February 14th – 16th fans can buy tickets to the see event’s closing stages. 

Throughout the 2025 Six Invitational, all eyes will be on whether Rainbow Six’s current world champions W7M Esports can be the first team to win back-to-back events. Despite completely changing its roster at the end of last year’s Six Invitational, the Brazilian esports organisation finished 2024 strong by winning BLAST R6 Major Montreal 2024. 

On the other hand, it’ll be interesting to see whether W7M’s old roster, now under the FURIA banner, can surprise many in the tournament despite only placing 12th in the Global Standings. 

Speaking of the Global Standings, Team BDS and FaZe Clan will be looking to become winners of the Six Invitational for the first time.

Currently ranked first on the Global Rankings, Team BDS has been a consistent performer, finishing second in both of BLAST’s Majors last year.

Meanwhile, FaZe Clan has been dominant in the Brazilian regional league, the same league with W7M Esports, securing back-to-back first places in Stages 1 and 2. 

The underdog picks have to go to the two teams that are entering the Six Invitational with no support from an organisation — Unwanted and Team Joel. Featuring three members of the former Cloud9 Beastcoast roster, Unwanted is the highest-ranked NA team at this year’s Six Invitational having ranked fourth in the Global Standings.

Meanwhile, Team Joel struggled to find an organisation following the termination of its contract with BLEED Esports.

The Six Invitational is available to watch on the Rainbow Six’s official Twitch and YouTube channels across a variety of languages including English, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Japanese, French and Arabic.

The Six Invitational 2025 Grand Finals will also be streamed live on Bilibili for Chinese audiences. 

For fans that tune into the action live on Twitch, Ubisoft is also creating Twitch drops available to those who continuously watch the competition. To find out how to claim these rewards, and what fans can receive, check out our guide here.