Overview Gridlock is a competitive Minecraft league in which two-player teams race each other across a custom 1,000-by-1,000-block map to complete a shared bingo card, and a square the other team finishes first is locked out for good. The creator Couriway leads the project, with Evil Geniuses behind it. Season 1 in 2026 was built in four stages - open qualifiers, a bracket stage, a monthly Circuit and the Grand Finals - with separate European and North American regions, Europe playing Saturdays and North America Sundays, and a $45,000 prize pool. Gridlock plays on its own server, map and resource pack and is not affiliated with Mojang or Microsoft. Evil Geniuses won the VALORANT Champions Tour world championship in 2023. On site A match starts with each duo picking one of four quadrants of the map. The pair ride a Happy Ghast over it, glide down on Elytra, and start gathering and crafting. Board squares are worth one point for simple objectives and two for complex ones, five Quest Squares unlock as the 30-minute clock runs, and a full row, column or diagonal doubles the squares in it. A team that holds more than half the points on the board wins on the spot, a Total Gridlock. The main broadcast runs a preshow and regional casters, WadeBox and Fulham for Europe and jojosolos and nEmerald for North America. Audience Every competitor has to stream their own point of view for the whole match, so a match is watched on the main broadcast and on the players' own channels at the same time, and viewers can make picks on each match on the league's site. Qualifying was open: any duo that signed up in the window could play. Talent and Influencers Couriway is project lead and game designer. bumpyJake is project manager and development lead, skye_exe creative lead, and Kaelten leads game design; Keystone Builds built the map. Signups for Season 1 opened live at a TwitchCon Europe panel in 2026, where Couriway presented Gridlock at the Minecraft Arena. Track record The Season 1 qualifiers ran three weekends in July 2026, seven matches in eight hours each weekend, and cut the field to 256 duos after the first, 64 after the second and 16 after the third. The bracket stage halved each region to eight for the Circuit, which pays out every month it runs, $2,000 to the winner down to $200 for seventh and eighth. Brand presence Evil Geniuses' marketing and brand partnerships team works the league alongside Gridlock's own staff. Because Gridlock runs its own server and approved client list, the map, the board and the broadcast overlay are all built in-house, and the season is sold at three levels: Presenting, Premier and Official.