North American esports organisation Evil Geniuses (EG), in collaboration with their signed content creator and speedrunner Anthony “Couriway” Salzarulo, announced a brand-new competitive Minecraft event called Gridlock.

The event aims to bridge the gap in the Minecraft competitive space by bringing together speedrunners, survival multiplayer creators, and player-versus-player athletes. It features a unique objective-driven format set across multiple months in 2026 with a $45,000 total prize pool.

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Gridlock shifts the standard competitive formula by pitting duos against each other in a 30-minute battle on a custom 1,000 by 1,000-block map. Rather than just surviving or directly eliminating opponents, teams must interact with a shared bingo card of objectives. When one team completes a square on the card, that square is permanently locked out from the opponent. The team with the most points at the end of the timer, or the team that manages to mathematically lock out their opponent, takes the match.

The competition stretches across four distinct phases beginning in the summer and concluding in December. Open Qualifiers will run from June 13 to July 12, requiring duos to play exactly seven games per weekend. Teams with a win rate below 50% by the end of the weekend will be eliminated. The top 24 duos will then advance to the Bracket Stage from July 25 to August 9. Here, a best-of-three single-elimination bracket narrows the field down to the top eight teams per region.

These teams will then punch their tickets to The Circuit, a stage running from August 22 to November 1. Duos will be split into round-robin groups to earn their spot in the regional Grand Finals. The final stage is the Grand Finals from December 5 to December 13, where the best teams from both the North American and European brackets will determine the ultimate season champion.

While anyone across the globe is free to register and compete, the tournament officially operates on server clusters divided into two regions: North America and Europe. European matches are scheduled to take place on Saturdays, while North American matches take place on Sundays. Players from regions outside of these clusters can still participate but must select one of the two regions and navigate the inherent latency and time zone tradeoffs.

The inaugural tournament boasts a $45,000 total prize pool distributed across the Circuit and Grand Finals phases. Monthly circuit play yields $5,000 per region every month, awarding $2,000 to first place, $1,000 to second, and scaling down to $200 for the bottom placings. The ultimate Grand Finals carry a $7,500 prize pool per region, with the winning duo walking away with $3,500.

It will be interesting to see how the massive audience of Minecraft—the best-selling game of all time with over 350 million copies sold—translates into competitive viewership and commercial opportunities. A move appealing directly towards the Minecraft streaming culture was also included in the dynamics of competition: Players are required to cast their own points of view at the platform of their choice, while the main broadcast will run on the Couriway and Evil Geniuses Twitch channels.

While Gridlock is a bold move by Evil Geniuses and Couriway, it is made clear at the circuit’s official website that, as of the initial launch, there are no plans to make the game mode publicly playable outside of the tournament environment.

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