Will FIFA 17’s Weekend League be open to everyone the week of Christmas?

UPDATE: Doesn’t look like it :( Next weekend and the following New Year’s Weekend’s schedules/requirements are up. There are 16 qualifying attempts for both and a normal enough looking Weekend League. No requirements squad-wise for either.

Original article: For the first time since launching their wildly successful FUT Champions Weekend League, the FIFA 17 production team seem to have, well, forgotten to populate the requirements for next week’s qualifying tournaments and subsequent Weekend League.

To those less familiar, FUT Champions is EA’s new stab at bringing competitive FIFA to the masses. Each week, you can try 16 times to qualify for an exclusive elite weekend competition called The Weekend League. The first two days and second two days of qualifying may have unique team lineup specific prerequisites in order to participate. If you’re fortunate enough to make it, the 72 hour Weekend League sometimes also has lineup prerequisites in order to play, and you have three days to win as many games as you can (up to a maximum of 40).

Since the Weekend League started back in early October, each week, when the new Weekend League was upon us, the following week (up to two weeks ahead)’s requirements for both the qualifying tournaments and the weekend competition itself were revealed ... Until now.

While some have been hypothesizing this may mean a week off for everyone to spend with family members and loved ones, when you look at the number of remaining games for active weekend league participants, it still lists “120 remaining”:

The simplest explanation is the week of Christmas, with more new FIFA 17 players than ever before, EA will simply elect to open the competition to everyone. This might mean players not quite good enough to consistently win qualifying tournaments will get a chance at some great prizes. Depending on your skill level, it could also mean some extra potential wins you weren’t able to muster against better competition in past weekends.

Another possibility is that a Weekend League open to everyone with bigger and better prizes than ever. Imagine double coins (or packs) for the same number of wins in past weekends.

With more players taking to the Weekend League than just about any other game mode in this year’s FIFA, it’d be surprising to see them forego an entire weekend of competition, even a holiday one. Opening the Weekend League up to everyone might just be a great way to start FUTmas, an annual period of give aways of in-game coins, packs, and more, off the right way.