ODL 2025 + 2026 Plans and updates!

ODL 2025

Unfortunately, we will not be running a full OCE Draft League this year.

We won’t be running a full OCE Draft League season in 2025, and we’d like to share why — and where we’re headed next.

Schedule

We’d planned our schedule early, assuming a similar off-season length to previous years. Once the RLCS 2026 schedule was announced, it became clear that fitting a full season in without major overlap wasn’t realistic. A full ODL season runs for over two months, and spreading it out further risks losing momentum. Many of our core staff also have RLCS responsibilities, so it became clear we couldn’t do both justice.

Funding

ODL has always been powered by passion — largely self- and community-funded since 2020, with occasional sponsorships and generous donations. As the league has grown, so have expectations, and we want to deliver an even better experience. But with that growth comes more complexity — each season effectively means running three major tournaments (Div 1–3) simultaneously.

In 2024, Epic’s support made ODL SIX our biggest season yet — it allowed us to pay staff, expand production, and put on a show we’re proud of. While we hoped for similar funding this year, RLCS scheduling made that unrealistic. Rather than push through at a loss, we’re refocusing on sustainable funding and community-driven models moving forward.

And that brings us to what comes next.

ODL 2026

Moving into the new year, we definitely want to take our prep work from 2025 and focus on finding a space for ODL 2026. Over the end of 2025, we may release more updates or questions on how we can achieve this with you, our community. We will be pushing more into trying to secure sponsorship deals, but we may need your feedback and/or commitments on:

• Volunteer work - I know there's plenty of you out there that would love to help out, and we may need to rely on this again in future. It sucks we can't pay everyone without massive funding, and all I can really offer is our thanks and gratitude.
• Community funding - We can always set up a very early prize pool goal from community funding. If we have something open for many months, players could potentially donate small amounts when they can. There will be no pressure to contribute, and we can guarantee that any money raised in this fashion will always be reserved for prizepool distribution, along with potential commitments that any other funding sources should at least match the community contributions to the prizepool, or an even split of some sort to the volunteers, before expanding into production, content, or other quality-of-life improvements.
• Organisations - previously we have charged organisations for sponsoring teams in ODL. There is a fine line between earning some money to support the tournament, and actually attracting orgs in willing to pay that money, so we could potentially work on this a lot earlier to bring in orgs who may be willing to contribute more than normal to help keep ODL going

If you’re passionate about seeing ODL continue, whether as a volunteer, sponsor, or supporter, we’d love to hear from you. Your feedback will shape what ODL 2026 becomes.

MINI LEAGUE?

Ah yes, we ran one of these once before — and it’s about time it came back.

We’re excited to bring back the ODL Mini League sometime soon! With new automation tools being built into odl.gg, managing smaller, recurring events will be much smoother. These mini leagues can keep the community active between major seasons — more Rocket League, more fun, less admin stress.

We have similar challenges with funding, but the expectation of Mini Leagues would generally be quite lower financial investment, lower broadcast expectations, and generally smaller scale. Let's see how we go here.

SITE UPDATES

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out updates to ODL.gg to better support tournaments and kickstart a new cycle of community feedback and inclusion. This will include a brand new merch store (still provided by True Apparel) and much more, including this blog!

BUT WHERE ARE MY JERSEYS?

I owe a big apology to our champions still waiting on jerseys — that’s on me.

(Skip this part if you don’t want the backstory!) - Over the last 2 years, personally (as in me, Guru, Joe Goldman) have had quite a change in my health, stress and job responsibilities. Two years ago, I hit a rough patch with my health and balance. Over the last 12 months I’ve worked hard to turn things around — new job, better habits, and a lot of progress. I am on my 3rd job this year (which is odd for me, as before this year I had worked for 2 companies for the last near 15 years), but have settled into something that has me looking forward to the future professionally, whilst also doing whats needed to improve my physical health which I'm already feeling the benefits of, but still have more to go.

^ Why was any of that relevant? Well thats my excuse for just burying my head in the sand and not dealing with the 'cleanup' work of my commitments over those 2 years. I blew away the old odl.gg website in favour for the new one to help with ODL SIX, and with it lost the setup i had for ordering the jerseys and other merch for the champions and just never got to doing it again (manually or with website upgrades) - so I've neglected the S5 and S6 champions on this a lot.

With these site upgrades, I'll be able to finish this out and get you all in a fresh fit!

FORGIVENESS?

No, I don't really deserve it, not at least until I get you the jerseys in hand. This is all purely my own fault, and I will fix it for everyone. I’m also working on a small bonus — nothing huge, but hopefully a heartfelt thank you...

CONCLUSION

ODL is and always will be the heart of my esports journey. As long as there’s community passion behind it, I’ll keep finding ways to make it happen.

Thank you for being part of this journey — your support, ideas, and energy are what keep ODL alive. Here’s to an even stronger 2026.

ODL is nothing without you — the community that makes it all possible. Thank you for believing in what we’ve built together.