MLBB M5 World Championship
The 2023 Mobile Legends: Bang Bang World Championship, commonly referred to as the M5 World Championships and M5, was the fifth edition of the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang World Championship, an esports tournament for the mobile phone MOBA game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. The world championship lasted from November 23 until December 17, 2023.
This edition of the world series foresaw an increase in regional and team participation with new entries including South Asia, Mekong, Mongolia and China. Meanwhile, team qualifications for Latin America increased from one representative to two for this edition. This world championship featured the first wild card event where eight teams from the aforementioned regions including Malaysia, Europe, MENA, and LATAM were able to compete for two wildcard slots. It also featured then, the highest prize pool for any international MLBB competition at $900,000, and the highest number of team participation in all of its editions.
In the Grand Finals, AP Bren won the M5 World Championship title in seven games, defeating Indonesia's ONIC Esports making them the only organization thus far to win two-world championship titles. This was the second-time that an Indonesian and Filipino representative faced each other in the Grand Finals of a major MLBB tournament, the first being Blacklist International and ONIC Esports during MSC 2023.
The Grand Finals match also broke the M4 World Championship’s Grand Finals viewership record—recording 5,067,107 peak live viewers during the match, making it the most-watched MLBB game in history and the second-most watched game in 2023, just behind the 2023 League of Legends World Championship between T1 and Weibo Gaming.
Background
Following M4, the MLBB M5 World Championships is the fifth Mobile Legends: Bang Bang World Championship and the first edition of the games to be held in the Philippines. Malaysia was later announced to be the host of the wildcard round.Previously, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia held the first four editions of the games, M1 in Kuala Lumpur; M2 and M3 in Singapore; and M4 in Jakarta.
M5 featured teams from Asia, North America, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Latin America. Teams qualified through their region's qualification method, whether it be an MPL Region or a Moonton-approved qualification tournament.
Venue
The M5 World Championship was announced to be held in Metro Manila.Alongside Moonton, the country's Department of Tourism organized the event. EVM Convention Center hosted the group stage and first knockouts stage of M5. On the other hand, the latter knockout stages and grand finals was held at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum in Manila. The selling of tickets for the event started on October 25.
| Group Stage and Knockout Stage Phase 1 | Knockout Stage Phase 2 and Grand Finals | |
| Quezon City | Manila | |
| - | - |
Qualified teams
Qualifying for the M5 World Championship comes from the competing nation's Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League or commonly known as "MPL." However, regional qualifiers in the North America, Turkey, Myanmar, and Latin American regions were also held to broaden the reach of the Championship's teams. Two teams shall also qualify from the M5 Wildcards.M5 will feature the European region for the fourth time since its absence in the last M4 World Championship. The number of natural qualifiers for MPL Malaysia have also been reduced to one. Instead of having its own slot, Brazil is now included in the Latin America region for a chance in the two regional teams participating for the world championship.
The defending World Champions in ECHO Philippines would not be completing their back-to-back championship titles due to them being eliminated by Blacklist International in the Lower Grand Finals of MPL Philippines Season 12.
- Group Stage: December 2 to 7, 2023
- * 16 teams will be divided into 2 groups.
- * Single Round Robin, all matches are played in a Bo3.
- * Top 2 teams from each groups will advance to Knockout Stage.
- * Bottom 2 teams from each groups will be eliminated from the tournament.
- Knockout Stage: December 9 to 17, 2023
- * 8 teams from Group Stage will play in a double-elimination bracket.
- ** All Matches will be played in a Bo5 except Grand Final.
- ** Grand Finals will be played in a Bo7.
| Region | League | Qualification method | Team name | ID | Group | ||||||||
| Philippines | MPL Philippines | MPL Philippines Season 12 Champions |  Official rostersReturning teams from the previous MLBB World Championships include Blacklist International, ONIC Esports and RRQ Akira while newer teams such as Geek Fam Indonesia, Bigetron Sons, HomeBois, Team Flash, Triple Esports, Fire Flux Esports, TheOhioBrothers and most of the wildcard teams will be part of their first world championships.AP Bren marks a return as the M2 World Champions alongside Burmese Ghouls who were their finals opponents on the aforementioned series, Blacklist International are returning for their third-consecutive Worlds after winning M3 and runners-up for M4. SeeYouSoon and Team SMG returns since M3 and Deus Vult returns since M1. M5 Wild CardThe M5 Wild Card tournament is a qualifying tournament for the MLBB M5 World Championship, an esports tournament for the Mobile Game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.The M5 World Championship was the first edition to include a wild card round. The top two teams will qualify for the main tournament.
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