High School Esports League (HSEL) Nationals 2025 returns to the heart of the Midwest in Kansas City! The best teams from HSEL Premier along with those advancing from the Wild Card will battle over 3 days, Friday May 30th - Sunday June 1st, to determine who is the undisputed national champion across all of high school esports. All remaining year-round tournaments with regional divisions present will have their own online HSEL Nationals event mid-May, over 2 weeks to accommodate for graduations.
HSEL Premier 2025
The return of HSEL Premier will see the top 12 schools in each region for Rocket League, Super Smash Bros.™ Ultimate (1v1), and VALORANT grind through a rigorous 5-week round robin season, with the top 4 from each group advancing to their region’s 8-team double elimination bracket.
Participants should note the updated rules around rescheduling matches, found within HSEL General Rule 3.1.1: “All reschedule requests must be initiated before the end of week 1 on Friday, excluding unforeseeable events (e.g. power/network outage, severe weather, etc.).” This rule is in place to give all teams a fair chance to work out any schedule conflicts whilst maintaining a consistent schedule for all schools in the competition.
Qualifying for Premier
Remember, the top 8 (quarterfinalists) in each game’s Champ Bracket, will receive an invitation--sent to the coach's email--to the Premier regular season, enabling them to bypass the open qualifier stage! For all other teams, the open qualifiers will run throughout the month of February. The number of spots available will be determined by how many Fall Major quarterfinalists and partnered state league champions have accepted their bid.
The deadline for accepting an invitation is Friday, January 31st
Stay up to date with all Premier information by bookmarking the HSEL Premier 2025 overview on our help site.
HSEL Nationals 2025 Qualification
Reaching a specific round in the Premier playoffs will grant participants a spot at HSEL Nationals. The following participants will have qualified for HSEL Nationals:
Rocket League & VALORANT: 8 total teams per game will qualify
1 Premier Upper Finals winner (per region)
1 Premier Lower Finals winner (per region)
National Wild Card Top 2
Super Smash Bros.™ Ultimate: 12 players will qualify
2 Premier Upper Semis winners (per region)
1 Premier Lower Semis winner (per region)
National Wild Card Top 3
HSEL Wild Card
Introduced last year as a promotion mechanism from Major → Nationals, and as a last chance qualifier (LCQ) for Premier teams, the Wild Card is a system HSEL is determined to cement as a permanent mechanism in our tournament programming. This year, HSEL tournament admins have fine tuned the process in an attempt to provide a more streamlined and accessible system.
Timeframe
The start of the Wild Card now begins earlier in the calendar year and may overlap with later rounds of the Premier playoffs. This will limit the amount of downtime for teams who have yet to qualify and create a more seamless process when it comes to finalizing our list of qualifiers.
The new window for the Wild Card is 4/16/2025 - 5/6/2025.
The specific start date will differ depending on the game and qualification criteria (eg. which round win qualifies a participant for HSEL Nationals).
Major Tier Promotion
Since the Wild Card will take place prior to the culmination of the Major tier playoff stage, we’re adjusting which Major participants are eligible to compete. Now, rather than winning the Major tier Champ Bracket, any participants (in these 3 games) who go undefeated during the regular season–ending 4/11/2025–will receive an invite to the single elimination bracket. This change is an opportunity for more of those who climb to the top of the Major leaderboards to truly prove themselves against the Premier players.