MLQ unveils 2026 Benepe Cup path, 10-team bracket and seeding race

Major League Quadball released its July 1 bracket for a 10-team road to the Benepe Cup. Regular-season results across four divisions feed into the Central and East conference championships, where each bracket starts with three best-of-three matchups: 1 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, and 3 vs. 3.

The winner of Series 1 becomes conference champion. The loser of Series 1 drops into a second matchup against the winner of Series 2, with those teams fighting for the conference’s second and third seeds. The loser of Series 2 then meets the winner of Series 3 for the fourth and final seed, while the Series 3 loser is eliminated. After that, MLQ places 10 teams into the Benepe Cup bracket, with Central designated as A and East as B for seeding purposes. Every matchup remains best-of-three even as the tournament becomes single elimination.

The public schedule lists July 11 in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, July 18 in Cleveland and San Antonio, and the July 25-26 weekend in Springfield, Missouri, leaving little time for clubs to separate themselves before the conference tournaments arrive. All six teams from each conference travel to the two-day conference championship, which determines both the conference winner and which five teams from each conference advance to MLQ Championship. Tickets were already on sale as the bracket became public.

MLQ’s 2024 championship used a play-in bracket and a championship bracket. New York later became only the third franchise to lift the Benepe Cup, sweeping Chicago in the final, after Austin and Boston had been the only prior champions. Austin’s 2022 title completed the first three-peat in league history.

The Benepe Cup concludes the summer-long official season and is named for Alex Benepe, the quadball founder and former US Quadball CEO. Its championship event also includes the Next Gen Showcase and Take Back the Pitch.