The League Stage groups for the PUBG India Challenge 2026 are set, with 32 squads split into four groups of eight ahead of the stage’s opening day. KRAFTON India Esports confirmed the draw on 12 November, a day after the Open Qualifiers decided which teams would make it this far. Matches begin at 6:25 pm IST, or 12:55 UTC, on the KRAFTON India Esports YouTube channel. S8UL and Team Apex Gaming are the best-known names in the field, alongside a long list of grassroots squads hoping to use the event as a breakthrough.
S8UL and Team Apex Gaming headline the PIC 2026 groups
Group A carries the biggest name in the tournament. S8UL, one of India’s best-known esports and creator organisations, have been drawn alongside Frog Fusion, CRQ, Team Division, POG, C4, R4 and YKS. Group D includes Team Apex Gaming, the organisation that signed chess grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi as its first chess player earlier this week. Most of the other squads are smaller teams from India’s PUBG PC community, which has had few big stages in recent years.
| Group A | Group B | Group C | Group D |
|---|---|---|---|
| S8UL | TVA | OR | SIC |
| Frog Fusion (FN) | HAVK | TOG | Team Apex Gaming (TAG) |
| CRQ | STA | Zawlbuk (MZ) | TTH |
| Team Division (TD) | UKI | ORK | Benzene (C6H6) |
| POG | BT | Outrage (OUT) | RYU |
| C4 | TZ | JINX | XCLN |
| R4 | Akatsuki (TSU) | Flawless (FLaW) | PDX |
| YKS | Dark Squad (D4RK) | Agni Crew (AGNI) | AimLegit (ALG) |
Group B brings together TVA, HAVK, STA, UKI, BT, TZ, Akatsuki and Dark Squad, while Group C features OR, TOG, Zawlbuk, ORK, Outrage, JINX, Flawless and Agni Crew. Group D is completed by SIC, TTH, Benzene, RYU, XCLN, PDX and AimLegit. KRAFTON India has not yet published the full match-by-match schedule for the League Stage, so it is not clear which groups face each other on each day.
Twelve Grand Finals spots are on the line before 22 November
The League Stage runs from 12 to 22 November and decides most of the Grand Finals field. The top 12 teams across the stage qualify directly for the Grand Finals, which makes consistency over the whole stage more important than one big night. Teams that finish between 13th and 28th still have a lifeline in the Last Chance Stage on 26 November, where four more Grand Finals places are available. The bottom four teams of the League Stage go home.
The Grand Finals on 28 and 29 November will feature 16 teams over 10 matches, played in TPP squads on PUBG: Battlegrounds. The event, organised by KRAFTON with Tesseract Esports, carries a ₹25 lakh prize pool, with ₹7.5 lakh for the champions and a ₹50,000 bonus for the Grand Finals MVP. Registration was free, although every player had to be over 18 and own BATTLEGROUNDS Plus to take part.
KRAFTON India is building PUBG PC around the working day
Every PIC 2026 match is being played after 6 pm IST, a choice KRAFTON India made so that players with jobs, college and school can still compete. That decision matters in a scene where most players are not full-time professionals, and where a weekday afternoon schedule would have shut out many of the teams in these groups. KRAFTON India confirmed the timings when it extended the registration deadline to 7 November, which also gave more squads time to enter.
It is also part of a wider push by KRAFTON India beyond BGMI. The company’s esports team has just come off BMIC 2026 in Mumbai, and Karan Pathak, its Associate Director of Esports, discussed the PC schedule when he spoke to TalkEsport at the Dome. Played under the PUBG Esports banner, a healthy PIC would give India’s PUBG PC players a rare domestic stage of their own.
For the teams themselves, the next 10 days will decide whether they reach the Grand Finals at all. A strong start matters because only the top 12 avoid the Last Chance Stage. The League Stage opens at 6:25 pm IST on 12 November, with all four groups now locked.
