📝 The fight to avoid Falcons: OWCS Korea Stage 3 Playoffs preview

Last week was chaotic in the Overwatch Champion Series Korea. ONSIDE Gaming and WAE emerged from the Last Chance Qualifier, and then WAE took it a step further by beating Team Falcons as well. Setting us up for two single elimination semi-finals, a grand final, and a third place match this weekend.

If you missed any of the action last week, you can catch up on all of it in our weekly summary. It’s important to note that all six teams involved in this bracket, including the two eliminated teams, Falcons and ONSIDE Gaming, will compete again in the Road to World Finals tournament later this month, which serves as the qualification to World Finals in Stockholm in November. If you are still unsure how the format works in OWCS Korea, you can read more details in our format preview.

Day 1, Semi-finals (October 11, 2025)

To understand the stakes of this game, we need to appreciate that the Road to World Finals tournament is split into two parts. A single elimination Play-ins stage between the 4th, 5th and 6th teams from this tournament, in which only one will emerge to the playoffs portion of that tournament and join the 1st, 2nd and 3rd teams from the regional playoffs this weekend. Factor in, Team Falcons are waiting in the single-elimination Play-ins, and you can appreciate how keen teams will be to avoid that fate.

Crazy Raccoon vs WAE

Crazy Raccoon are a team whose performance rises with the occasion, and while we are still a few notches down the importance belt in the lengthy Korean qualification system, avoiding Falcons may well be motivation enough to get them past WAE.

Crazy Raccoon are heavy favourites for this fixture, and while WAE have beaten them in the past, this has been limited to regular season games where Crazy Raccoon could afford to lose. WAE result over the Falcons last week means you must pay attention to them, though the player quality is undoubtedly there. Lee "Ade" Ji-hwan and Park "SeonJun" Seon-jun were huge factors in the result against Team Falcons, and on form, they can reach the levels required to win this game.

Form is a temperamental mistress, though, and no one knows this better than WAE and their fans. As much as they got that impressive win over the Falcons last week, it was coupled with a 0-3 defeat to ONSIDE GAMING the day before. WAE are the world's most unpredictable team. The peak gives them a shot at the upset here; the bottom end is a repeat of this fixture in the semifinal of Stage 2, an easy 4-0 for Crazy Raccoon.

T1 vs ZETA DIVISION

While there is no official game of the week this time around, as the Grand Final is likely to take that mantle, this is the best of the Semifinal fixtures. T1 are a team that has impressed many times this year but failed to convert that into victories in the most important games. Success in this tournament won't disprove that trend, but every victory over a major team brings them closer to doing it when it matters.

The biggest worry for T1 may be the meta. Last weekend in Korea, we saw Rammatra coming back into the meta, a rare weakness in Kim "DONGHAK" Min-sung’s hero pool and a strength in Shin "BERNAR" Se-won’s. Combined with Jung "Probe" Jun-young’s best performance in a ZETA jersey so far last weekend, there are reasons to be hopeful for ZETA DIVISION fans.

Reasons to be hopeful for ZETA DIVISION fans will be corrupted by the team’s frequent disappointments, a regular season plagued with close series against weaker opposition, which hardly helps their case. The ZETA roster has talent, though. The players on this roster have had major success in their careers in the Overwatch League. Oh "Pelican" Se-hyun and Kim "AlphaYi" Jun had an elite regular season despite the team's overall struggles. While they may match up poorly to Team Falcons in this meta, against T1, a Rammatra resurgence favours ZETA. There is reason to hope, but a top 3 finish this weekend will be essential in moving them forward and avoiding Team Falcons.

Day 2, Finals (October 12, 2025)

Grand Final

The expected Grand Final is Crazy Raccoon vs T1, which would be a repeat of the Stage 2 regional playoffs Grand Final, one that Crazy Raccoon won 4-2 despite T1’s domination during the regular season.

A rematch here would be a chance for redemption for T1 as well as a response to their regular season loss to the Falcons in Week 4. A T1 victory would certainly mean more to the squad than to Crazy Raccoon, where it would be merely another feather in a well-adorned cap.

Third-place match

This match will be the most important of the weekend. The winner goes straight to the Playoff stage of the Road to World Finals, where a double elimination bracket gives them room for error and adaptations to secure their spot in Stockholm.

The loser will have to await what is likely to be Team Falcons in a single elimination match to even reach the aforementioned double elimination portion. As much as the Falcons have middled their way to an underwhelming Stage 3 this far, the Jafonso award-winning Midseason champions are a foe no one wants to play at such an early juncture.

Worth noting if the fixture is ZETA DIVISION against WAE, as people may expect, WAE actually came out on top of this fixture during the regular season iteration of this match. With Lee "Mealgaru" Jeong-hwan tearing them apart on Roadhog, but a lot has happened since then, and a lot of Overwatch will be played before we reach this third-place match. So tune in for another weekend of Korea’s best, duking it out for a chance to duke it out again later this month.