MOONTON Games has expanded the qualifying structure for the M8 World Championship, widening the Wild Card Stage to 10 teams and opening a new route to the event through the MLBB Championship Tour, Esports.gg reports.
The Main Stage and finals will be held in Istanbul, Türkiye in January 2027 — the M Series' first trip to Europe — while the Wild Card Stage runs in Bangkok, Thailand.
A bigger Wild Card, and a third slot
The Wild Card Stage grows from the eight teams that contested it at M7 to a record 10 for M8, and those teams now play for three places in the 16-team Main Stage rather than the two the previous edition offered: three qualifiers out of ten entrants, where M7 sent two out of eight.
M8 also becomes the first M Series tournament to admit teams that qualify through the MLBB Championship Tour. Esports.gg reports that the Wild Card expansion and the MCT pathway together raise the number of teams capable of reaching the global stage, giving sides from developing regions more routes in.
Five regions feed the bracket
Slot allocation for both stages is built around five competitive regions:
- Southeast Asia (SEA)
- Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA)
- Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA)
- East Asia (EA)
- the Americas (AMER)
Esports.gg describes the M Series as the layer that connects MLBB's established franchised leagues to its growing regional competitions.
Tiger Xu, global head of MLBB esports at MOONTON Games, said the changes reflect the company's vision for the game's next phase as it approaches its 10th anniversary. Xu added that connecting more regions to international competition would help produce a stronger and more diverse competitive field, with the stated aim of building an ecosystem in which talent from every region can compete at the highest level.