Today, DreamHack announced that it will be holding Magic: the Gathering Arena tournaments at four of its festivals in 2020. Each tournament will be livestreamed and award $100,000 in prizes.
The first event will be held at DreamHack Anaheim from February 21-23, and will be followed by events at DreamHack Dallas (May 22-25), DreamHack Atlanta (November 13-15), and DreamHack Winter (in Jönköping, Sweden from November 27-29). The format for the tournaments has not been revealed but they will use traditional Swiss pairing and will be open to any player that has a ticket to the festival. For more information, DreamHack says they will provide updates on the DreamHack Anaheim site.
DreamHack made waves last year by hosting one of the first third-party tournaments to award an invite to the Pro Tour (before it was renamed to Mythic Championships and then Players Tour) under the new qualification program. That tournament had a similar structure to past Dreamhack tabletop events where players who went 4-0 in feeder events on Friday and Saturday of the festival qualified for Sunday’s 64-player, invitation-only event. The qualifying event featured eight pods of eight-player drafts with the winner of each pod moving on to the final Top 8 draft for their share of $5,000 in cash as well as the top prize: an invitation to the Pro Tour.
However, it appears that this new mini-circuit of MTG Arena events will use a much simpler format—Swiss pairings—and award significantly more prize money. It is unknown if the four tournaments in 2020 will award Players Tour invites but Hipsters of the Coast has reached out for clarification.
