Pro CoD 2027 Guide: CDL & Challengers Schedule, Format & Prize Money

Pro Call of Duty runs on two tiers. The Call of Duty League is 12 franchised teams playing a season of online events and LAN Majors that ends at Champs in July. Challengers is the open tier under it, where any team can play.

Challengers is the Call of Duty League’s open circuit: any team can enter the weekly Cups on FACEIT, the best of them earn their way into the Elite stages and the LAN Opens, and the season ends at the Challengers Finals. This season it also feeds the league itself, with Challengers teams playing CDL teams in the Kickoff Classic and in two of the four Majors.

Every finish so far is on the CDL results page, every signing and drop on roster moves, the league’s 12 teams on the CDL board, and the Challengers points race on the CDC standings.

The 2027 season is played on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Infinity Ward’s game, released October 23, 2026. The pros play it four on four, and every series is a best of 5 across three modes.

Hardpoint is a moving hill: one zone at a time, points for every second a team holds it alone.

Search and Destroy is rounds with no respawns: one side plants a bomb, the other defends or defuses it.

Hijack is new in Modern Warfare 4. It starts with a single Data Spike in the middle of the map. Both teams fight for it, the carrier can throw it or pass it, and a team scores for as long as it sits planted on the other side’s Comm Station, with more when it detonates. The defenders have to win the ground back and disarm it, and every reset is another scramble for the middle.

The Monster Launch Invitational, the first pro event on Modern Warfare 4, played these eight.

A new name in Boston. M80 bought Boston Breach’s place in the league, and the team plays this season as M80 Boston.

Pro-Ams. The league’s teams and Challengers teams now share brackets. The Kickoff Classic opens the season online with the top North American Challengers teams in it, and Major II in Birmingham and Major IV on the US West Coast are LAN Pro-Ams, Major II with four Challengers teams.

Minors. Three 16-team online Minors sit between the Majors, single-elimination gauntlets that pay CDL points, and North American Challengers teams play their way in.

A play-in at Major III. In Toronto, hosted by Toronto KOI, the bottom six seeds play a single-elimination play-in for the last places in the main double-elimination bracket.

The season ends at Championship Weekend, July 8–11, 2027, hosted by OpTic Texas.

Challengers Cups are open online events. A Cup starts with a single-elimination day on FACEIT, best of five, that runs down to eight teams; those eight play a double-elimination bracket the next day, best of five with a best-of-seven Grand Final. Every finish down to the top 64 earns CDC points, the Challengers standings.

Challengers Elite is the online stage for the top teams. Challengers Opens are the LAN events. The season ends at the Challengers Finals. The top two North American teams from Cups 1 and 2 also play the 12 CDL teams in the Kickoff Classic.