The Mobile Legends: Bang Bang world championship is leaving Southeast Asia for the first time. MOONTON announced on October 22 that M8 opens with a Wild Card stage in Bangkok, Thailand, a play-in that hands out the last three spots, before moving to Istanbul, Türkiye. The Knockout Stage runs January 14–19, 2027, at the ESA Espor Arena, and the Grand Finals go to the city's Ora Arena. The announcement doesn't date the final, though Malaysian outlet Pokde reports January 23, 2027. The prize pool is $1 million.
Tickets are already on sale through Biletix, the Turkish box office MOONTON links to, starting at ₺150. MOONTON puts that at $3.
Ticket prices and key dates
Early-bird sales run from October 24 to November 21, 2026. Visa cardholders get 20% off during that window, which brings a ₺150 ticket down to ₺120, or about $2.40 at the European Central Bank's October 27 reference rates. Biletix charges in Turkish lira, so your card issuer may add a foreign transaction fee.
The Grand Finals have a separate sale. MOONTON created Gen-M, a program that gives verified MLBB players first access to final-day tickets. Verification registration runs November 7–12, and verified fans get their own early-bird sale from November 18 to 21. The announcement doesn't spell out who qualifies and sends fans to the Biletix page to register.
Grand Finals tickets come in four tiers: Epic, Legend, Mythic and M-Circle. The first three borrow their names from the game's ranked tiers, and their prices haven't been published. M-Circle is the top package, with VIP seating, priority entry, a backstage walk, food and drinks, an M8 limited-edition gift and a Dragon Shard. MOONTON says more details arrive November 1.
What fans still need to know
All seven previous editions were held in Southeast Asia, in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. Istanbul runs eight hours ahead of New York and 11 ahead of Los Angeles in January, so a 6 p.m. match there starts at 10 a.m. Eastern and 7 a.m. Pacific.
Only the Knockout week, January 14–19, is locked in. MOONTON hasn't published dates for the Bangkok Wild Card or for the Swiss Stage that opens play in Istanbul, so anyone planning a trip for the early rounds should wait for the schedule.
How the format works
Ten teams play the Wild Card, up from eight at M7, for three spots in Istanbul instead of two. They split into two groups of five for a single round robin of one-game matches (best-of-one). Each group winner qualifies. The second- and third-place teams move to a cross-group, single-elimination bracket of best-of-five series that decides the last spot.
The Istanbul field has 16 teams. It opens with a five-round Swiss Stage, a format that pairs teams with the same win-loss record each round. Three wins send a team through and three losses knock it out, so no one plays more than five series and eight teams advance.
Those eight move on to the Knockout Stage, a double-elimination bracket where losing one series drops a team to the lower bracket and a second loss ends its run. Early series are best-of-three, later ones best-of-five, and the Grand Finals are best-of-seven, meaning the first team to four wins takes the title.
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How teams qualify, and where Europe's contenders stand
Thirteen of the 16 Istanbul teams qualify directly and three come out of the Wild Card. The slot allocation MOONTON published in August as an infographic, as reported by esports.gg and Gizmologi, gives two direct spots each to the professional leagues (MPL) in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, two to the Southeast Asian MCT circuit and two to EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). EECA (Eastern Europe and Central Asia), East Asia and the Americas get one each. MOONTON's October announcement clarifies that the East Asia and Americas spots also run through the MCT, which sends the top two Southeast Asian teams plus the champions of those two regions.
Other finishers from those circuits, plus qualifiers from other regional leagues, go to the Wild Card. Per esports.gg, EMEA and EECA each have two spots in Bangkok. EECA is home to Team Spirit, which won the Mid Season Cup (MSC) in Paris with a 4–3 Grand Final win over Myanmar's Yangon Galacticos, becoming the first team from outside Southeast Asia to win an official international MLBB event.
The allocation doesn't reserve a spot for the MSC champion, so Team Spirit has to earn its ticket in the MCC (MLBB Continental Championships), EECA's league, whose playoffs end October 31. The champion will represent the MCC at M8, as we covered in our piece on the MCC Season 8 schedule and Team Spirit's Golden Road.
In EMEA, Türkiye's MTC league is in its eighth season, with the final on November 7, and MOONTON frames it as the last leg of Türkiye's road to M8. Aurora Gaming has won the league's last three titles. MOONTON hasn't said which EMEA leagues share the region's two direct spots, and it hasn't announced an extra host slot for Türkiye.
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