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Clash Royale League (CRL) 2023
CRL returns in 2023 with a familiar format - here’s everything you need to know about the new season and World Finals.
infovis crl esports
Clash Royale League is back! This is the third edition of individual-player CRL, and this year it returns with a very familiar format.
In 2023 we’ll see a mix of the most loved features from the previous two years: a point leaderboard and Golden Tickets. Points are great to create a unified experience throughout the year. They allow everyone to keep track of the leading players at any given time, and reward the most consistent ones. On the other hand, Golden Tickets raise the stakes of all the events — anyone can qualify to the World Finals directly with a good performance.
Update 2023-03-14: CRL 2023 Leaderboard is now live!
Table of Contents
- Points and Golden Tickets
- World Finals
- Monthly Season Stages
- Stage 1: Path of Legends
- Stage 2: Monthly Qualifier Day 1 - Swiss
- Stage 3: Monthly Qualifier Day 2 - Double Round-Robin
- Stage 4: Monthly Final - Double-Elimination
- Monthly Schedule
- Tournament Hub
- Point System
- Swiss and Robin Points
- Monthly Final Points
- Prizes
- Event Coverage
- Differences With 2021
- Chinese Golden Tickets: Champions Cup (CRCC)
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Will there be a 20 Win Challenge?
- Does ranking higher in Path of Legends give you an advantage?
- Can players with a Golden Ticket compete in more seasons?
- When does the first CRL season start?
- Can everyone participate in CRL?
- Will CRL results be displayed in RoyaleAPI player profiles?
- Feedback
Points and Golden Tickets
This year CRL will have 7 monthly seasons. The first season starts in March, and the last one is in September. In each season, players earn points based on their performance, and the season champions get a Golden Ticket that secures their place in the World Finals.
Points earned are added into the CRL Leaderboard. After all the seasons end, the top 7 players join the 7 Golden Ticket winners in the World Finals.
Chinese players won’t participate in the international season system, as they’ll compete for 2 Golden Tickets in their local server.
| Qualification Method | World Finals slots |
|---|---|
| Monthly Season Winners | 7 |
| CRL Leaderboard | 7 |
| China | 2 |
World Finals
The CRL World Finals of 2023 will be a live event that will last for 3 days, from the 24th to the 26th of November. The location is still unknown. During the event, the 16 qualified players will compete in a double-elimination bracket for a $1,000,000 USD prize pool.
Monthly Season Stages
Each of the monthly qualifiers will have 4 stages, and all of them will be played in-game. So unlike in 2021, third-party platforms like Battlefy won’t be used. Instead, all matches will be handled through the Tournament Hub that was introduced last year. All the stages except Stage 1 will be based on the Duel battle format (Bo3 with decks that don’t have cards in common).
Stage 1: Path of Legends
Everyone can compete in-game in the ranked game mode that was introduced last year. Seasons finish the first Monday of each month and the top 1000 players can join the next stage. Players who are tied for 1000th place will also be invited to compete in the Monthly Qualifier.
Stage 2: Monthly Qualifier Day 1 - Swiss
Eligible players can sign up to the Swiss-system tournament (Wikipedia) in the Tournament Hub. On the first Saturday of the season, players compete in a single group for 11 rounds. The 32 players with the highest amount of wins advance to the next stage and secure at least $500 USD.
In case of ties, winners are decided by these tiebreakers:
- TB1: Opponents’ Match Win Rate & Players’ Battle Win Rate (OMWR + PBWR)
- TB2: Players’ Battle Win Rate (PBWR)
- TB3: Opponents’ Opponents’ Match Win Rate (OOMWR)
The core purpose of these tiebreakers is to distinguish between players who obtain the same amount of wins. To do so, it rewards players who obtained the same scores despite facing tougher opponents, and also rewards players who had better win rate when considering the battles inside Duel matches.
It’s expected that players will need at least 8 or 9 wins to reach the next stage.
Stage 3: Monthly Qualifier Day 2 - Double Round-Robin
The best 32 players compete the next day in Double Round-Robin groups. There are 8 groups of 4 players each, seeded based on their points in the CRL leaderboard.
| G1 | G2 | G3 | G4 | G5 | G6 | G7 | G8 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 32 | 31 | 30 | 29 | 28 | 27 | 26 | 25 |
Each player battles against the other 3 players in their group twice. The best player in each of the 8 groups moves on to the Monthly Final.
In this stage, the tiebreakers are:
- TB1: Head-to-head matches
- TB2: Players’ Battle Win Rate (PBWR) in Day 2
- TB3: Single-elimination bracket
Stage 4: Monthly Final - Double-Elimination
The top 8 players are seeded into a Double-Elimination Bracket (Wikipedia). This is a bracket format where players are eliminated once they have lost 2 matches. Alternatively, you can think of it as a bracket format where you have one extra life — you can still win the tournament even if you lost one round.
This bracket stage lasts 2 days and decides the winner of each season, who receives a $16,000 USD prize and a Golden Ticket. Everyone else gets CRL points and money based on their rank.
Monthly Schedule
As a summary, each of the 7 months will follow this schedule:
- First Monday of the season: Path of Legends ends
- First Saturday of the season: Swiss Qualifiers
- First Sunday of the season: Double Round Robin
- Second weekend of the season: Monthly Finals
Tournament Hub
Although only players who qualify can compete in the Tournament Hub, this feature will be available for everyone in the home screen, so you can find the latest results there.
As usual, RoyaleAPI will also cover these results and break down the meta as this top tier league develops.
Point System
There are 3 ways in which players earn CRL points:
- Winning matches in the Swiss tournament (Stage 2)
- Winning matches in the Double Round-robin (Stage 3)
- Rank in Monthly Final (Stage 4)
Swiss and Robin Points
Each duel won in these stages gives players 5 points. Swiss has 11 rounds, so participants can earn up to 55 points. The Double Round Robin has 6 rounds, so players can earn up to 30 points.
| Stage | Wins | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Swiss | 0 - 11 | 0 - 55 |
| Robin | 0 - 6 | 0 - 30 |
Monthly Final Points
Based on the final rank in the Double-elimination bracket, the point distribution is as follows:
| Rank | Points | Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | Golden Ticket |
| 2 | 80 | |
| 3 | 65 | |
| 4 | 50 | |
| 6 | 40 | |
| 8 | 30 |
A player who has a Golden Ticket doesn’t really need CRL points for anything, but they can’t hurt, right? All these points are cumulative, so a player can earn up to 185 in a single season if he wins all the matches.
RoyaleAPI’s CRL Leaderboard will be available as soon as possible. We are less than 2 months away from players earning their first points!
Prizes
Each month, players will be able to earn a total of $57,000 USD. This adds up to $399,000 USD across the 7 seasons. The World Finals will have $900,000 USD in prizes.
This makes a total of $1,299,000 USD. The amount is slightly lower than last year’s if we add the prizes of all the Golden Ticket events, but we also expect third-party events to return in the following months.
The prize distribution for each monthly season is as follows:
| Rank | Count | Prize | Total | Stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | $16,000 | $16,000 | MF |
| 2 | 1 | $10,000 | $10,000 | MF |
| 3 | 1 | $7,000 | $7,000 | MF |
| 4 | 1 | $4,000 | $4,000 | MF |
| 6 | 2 | $2,000 | $4,000 | MF |
| 8 | 2 | $1,000 | $2,000 | MF |
| 16 | 8 | $750 | $6,000 | MQ-D2 |
| 32 | 16 | $500 | $8,000 | MQ-D2 |
| Total | $57,000 |
The prize distribution in the World Finals is as follows:
| Rank | Count | Prize | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | $250,000 | $250,000 |
| 2 | 1 | $125,000 | $125,000 |
| 3 | 1 | $80,000 | $80,000 |
| 4 | 1 | $65,000 | $65,000 |
| 6 | 2 | $50,000 | $100,000 |
| 8 | 2 | $40,000 | $80,000 |
| 12 | 4 | $30,000 | $120,000 |
| 16 | 4 | $20,000 | $80,000 |
| Total | $900,000 |
Correction 2023-01-30: the total prize pool for the 2023 World Finals will be $900,000 instead of $1,000,000. We have updated our charts and tables to reflect this latest change.
Event Coverage
Similar to what we saw in 2021, there won’t be official streams that cover Stages 1-3. Community streamers will cover the Path of Legends’ end of season as usual, so there will be plenty of sources to watch your favorite players. The Monthly Qualifiers will also be covered by community content creators, who’ll be able to spectate any player easily through the Tournament Hub.
Monthly Finals will have official streams that cover the double-elimination bracket and enhance it with professional commentary and player cams. The brackets will also be available to everyone in the Tournament Hub, so there will be plenty of options to watch top tier players battling for a Golden Ticket.
Differences With 2021
Veteran players and fans might notice strong similarities with the 2021 format, so to avoid likely confusions we’ll list a recap of the main differences in regard to this new season:
- Stage 1: this year players first compete in the Path of Legends; in 2021 it was Ladder
- Ladder Points: Path of Legends ranks won’t give CRL points; 2021 Ladder ranks did
- Swiss Groups: there will be a single Swiss group on Qualifier Day 1; there were 4 different time slots in 2021
- Event platform: the Tournament Hub will be used for stages 2-4; in 2021 players used Battlefy
- Reaching WF: Golden Tickets give automatic qualification to monthly winners; in 2021 they only got extra points
- Players in WF: 16 players reach the World Finals this year; in 2021 there were 32
- Last Chance Qualifier: there won’t be a LCQ in 2023; in 2021 8 players qualified with it
- Live WF: World Finals will be an in-person event; in 2021 it was online
Chinese Golden Tickets: Champions Cup (CRCC)
The Champions Cup was first organised in 2022, and this year it returns with Golden Tickets for the best players. Similar to last year, CRCC has an initial stage with 4 regions. The 4 best players of each region advance to the final stage.
The event will have 2 separate seasons, and the best 3 players of each season advance to the CRL qualifier. In the qualifier, the 6 players will battle for the 2 available Golden Tickets to represent China in the World Finals.
The prize distribution for the event hasn’t been announced, but it will have a total prize pool of ¥600,000 RMB (~$90,000 USD).
Summary of the CRCC stages:
- Spring Season: March - May
- Summer Season: July - September
- CRL qualifier
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Will there be a 20 Win Challenge?
Unknown, these challenges usually happen once a year, so it might be announced when we get closer to the 2023 World Finals, but it won’t be part of this year’s CRL format.
Does ranking higher in Path of Legends give you an advantage?
No, this year it is only used to filter players. Seeding in the Swiss tournament will be randomised.
Can players with a Golden Ticket compete in more seasons?
Yes, players can still compete and earn more prizes. If the season champion already had a Golden Ticket, the runner-up will get the ticket instead.
When does the first CRL season start?
Next season (February) will be the first Path of Legends season in which players qualify. It ends the 6th of March, so the first Monthly Qualifier starts the following weekend.
Can everyone participate in CRL?
Players must reside in a country where Clash Royale is available to download in the local app store and be at least 16 years old.
Will CRL results be displayed in RoyaleAPI player profiles?
We plan to add a section for CRL like we did in 2021. This includes the current rank in the leaderboard and a performance breakdown by season.
When CRL 2023 concludes, rank badges are added to all the participants who have esports profiles enabled.
Feedback
What do you like about this year’s format? Share your thoughts and ask any questions you may have below!
Content and visualizations for this post are based on the CRL 2023 Competition Ruleset version 1.1. You can read the full rulebook here.
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