North American esports organisations OpTic Gaming and Spacestation Gaming will host two Halo tournaments ahead of the Halo Championship Series (HCS) Year 2 Kickoff Major in February 2023.

OpTic will host an invitational event in December at the Esports Stadium Arlington in Texas. Meanwhile, Spacestation will host a ‘unique online event’ in January 2023. Information on invited teams and prize pools have yet to be revealed.

The HCS Spartan Snowdown organised by Spacestation Gaming kicks off HCS’ 2023 campaign. According to the announcement, the event will feature new game modes created within Halo’s Forge.

In addition to the organisation’s events, the HCS confirms the second year of competition will begin with the Kickoff Major commencing in Charlotte, North Carolina on February 24th-26th, 2023. HCS Online qualifiers are set to also commence in January and February.

The news follows the conclusion of the 2022 Halo World Championship where OpTic Gaming defeated Cloud9 in the finals. According to Esports Charts, tournament viewership peaked at 143,585 viewers during the finals with over 1.8m hours watched throughout the entire event.

In February, 343 Industries announced partner team expansion would include one to three teams for Year 2, meaning more teams could join the programme.

Prior to Quadrant’s inclusion, the likes of Pioneers and Acend announced they were not selected to join as a partner team. It is not clear if more teams will join during the off-season.