Over the past few weeks, there's been a wave of enthusiasm across the student community for Overwatch to become a Premier Division title. It's also the first real test of a new way of making decisions in the Ireland Collegiate Esports Series.
During the 2025/26 series, a Working Group of Student Reps, game admins and the IECS team built a set of criteria that sets out:
What a title needs to enter the series
What it needs to support a Premier Division
When a title should step back down
The same standard now applies to every game. Student Reps and admins were consulted throughout the Overwatch evaluation process.
Two divisions, two different roles to play
The Open Division is the heart of the series. It's open to everyone, with as many teams per university as students can field.
The Premier Division brings each university's top team up against the best of every other university, one top team per institution, competing at the highest level.
Pathway to Premier
Overwatch clearly earns its place on participation. Peak of 22 teams competed last season, second only to Valorant. But two criteria aren't met yet, a clear competitive gap that makes a Premier tier meaningful and agreement that a split would improve competitive integrity.
For 2026/27 Overwatch stays in the Open Division, with a conditional Premier Division place for 2027/28. To help satisfy the outstanding criteria, Overwatch teams will have the following incentives to benefit from:
a place at the planned Open Division LAN Invitational in Spring 2027
co-streaming on the Collegiate Series twitch channel
co-streaming on the Ireland Esports Leagues YouTube channel
a showcase match at the National Finals (subject to capacity)
Building not reacting
Three years ago we were faced with a number of challenges, all very short-term. Thanks to the community buy-in and leadership from our management team, that decision looks two seasons ahead.
We’re now able to help our member Societies to plan budgets and teams. With the ENC as the top of our pathway, players can see a clear journey to representing Ireland. Partners can see where we're heading before they're asked to support it.
This is the first time the game title criteria has been used, the Game Admins and Student Reps are fundamental to developing the criteria as we continue to build into our tenth season.
