ExileCon 2026 Qualifiers: Schedule, Dates and How to Race

Grinding Gear Games published the ExileCon qualification schedule for Path of Exile — the original, not Path of Exile 2 — on August 25. Four races in September, a ticket to the live final in Auckland, and a ruleset that immediately rules out a good chunk of players.

Here are the dates, the exact rules, and the two conditions you need to meet before September 4 — because these aren't things you sort out at the last minute.

Grinding Gear Games' announcement was published in English. The passages in quotation marks in this article are our translation: they are not official wording from the French client.

The four dates, in Paris time

GGG has announced four qualifying events, all at the same time: 2 PM PDT. That's 11 PM in France each time, with California nine hours behind Paris in September.

GGG's wording is unambiguous about what's at stake: "the top racers from the four qualifying events will get the chance to take part in the live final at ExileCon in New Zealand." So there isn't a single qualifier: all four count, and missing the first one doesn't close any doors.

The destination, to put the stakes in perspective: ExileCon 2026 takes place on November 7 and 8 in Auckland, New Zealand. This will be the third edition.

The broadcast will be handled by ZiggyD and Raiz, on twitch.tv/pathofexile. GGG has also announced new Twitch Drops for viewers, with the list to be published "next week" — so sometime between August 26 and September 3. Watching will earn you something, even without racing.

The race: kill Kitava in Act 5, and nothing else

The objective fits in one sentence, and it's shorter than you'd expect for Path of Exile: be the first to kill Kitava in Act 5. Not Act 10, not the Atlas, not an endgame boss. The race stops at the halfway point of the campaign.

The environment is locked on three points, and each carries heavy consequences for preparation:

• Standard — so no league mechanic to exploit;
• Solo Self-Found (SSF) — the label stays in English in the French client. In practice: no party, no trading. The only items available are the ones you find or craft yourself;
• fixed seed — the random generation of zones is identical for every participant.

It's this third point that changes everything. In a fixed-seed race, the zone layout no longer rewards luck: it rewards whoever knows it best. Everyone crosses exactly the same map. The gap widens based on mastery of the route and execution speed, not on a shorter corridor drawn at random.

The death penalty: one minute of immobility

GGG spells it out in the same terms: "While this isn't a Hardcore event, players will be penalized for dying and will be unable to move until a minute has passed."

So this isn't Hardcore — a death doesn't eliminate you — but sixty seconds in a race lasting barely a few hours comes at a steep price. Two deaths, and a ranking spot is probably out of reach. The strategic reading is clear: in a fixed-seed race, it's better to lose ten seconds securing a passage than sixty missing it.

The two conditions to sort out before September 4

1. Link your Path of Exile account to Twitch

This is the only administrative step, and GGG insists: "If you're participating in the event, make sure your Path of Exile account is linked to your Twitch account." This is done by logging into your account on the official Path of Exile website.

An unlinked account means a sign-up that doesn't register — and there's nothing to be done once the race has started. Sort it out now, not on September 4 at 10:55 pm.

2. Make sure you're playing on PC

GGG states it in a standalone line: "The qualifier events are PC only." Console players are excluded, with no announced exceptions.

How to actually enter a race

The procedure described by GGG comes down to three steps:

1. On the character selection screen, click the "Join" button next to the race.
2. The game will then prompt you to create a character.
3. Once in-game, your character remains stationary until the official start.

This last point matters more than it seems: it means you can enter early without any penalty. The character is frozen in place, not disadvantaged. Create it calmly rather than in a last-minute scramble at the starting gun — in a race whose winner is decided by a matter of seconds, character creation is not the place to improvise.

What the full rules add

GGG points to a detailed set of rules published separately. The elements announced in the announcement itself are the ones covered above; everything circulating beyond that — class, ascendancy, or item restrictions, the points system across the four events — was not published in this post and should be checked in the rules before being taken as given.

Should you prepare, and how?

If you're aiming for a ranking, three approaches hold up based solely on the official information:

• Redo the campaign up to Kitava in SSF Standard, stopwatch in hand. That's exactly the event's format, down to the seed.
• Choose a starting build that doesn't depend on any specific item. In SSF, you can't buy back what you haven't found. A plan that assumes a single specific unique isn't a plan.
• Treat the four dates as four attempts. GGG isn't asking you to pick one: the best runners across all four events are the ones who count. The first serves as a benchmark.

And if you're not racing: block off the four Friday nights at 11 pm anyway. The announced Twitch Drops come just from watching.