The UK Tournament Circuit to Expand Warhammer 40k Group
The UK Tournament Circuit has confirmed plans to double its membership and tournament participation in 2024. The group is currently the largest in the world and is located in the homeland of Games Workshop.
Zachary Becker, the organizer of the UK Tournament Circuit and London Grand Tournament convention, plans to run seven new super-major Warhammer 40k tournaments and double the number of tickets available across the whole circuit in 2024. Becker explained his plans to Wargamer in between rounds at the London GT convention this weekend.
UK Tournament Circuit is a massive independent wargames organization in the UK that organized 11 Warhammer 40k super-majors in 2023.
According to Becker, Warhammer 40k should be as accessible to players as football, so they are never more than two hours away from a super-major event where they can meet fresh opponents.
Becker went on to explain that interest in organized tournaments for Warhammer 40k 10th edition has grown rapidly. Although it is expanding more quickly in the United States than the UK, partly due to the UK’s financial crisis.
A conversation in a pub with some friends led to the formation of the UKTC a few months after Becker rediscovered Warhammer 40k as an adult.
There was no organized play scene in the UK, compared to the strong offering in the States. That led to the first London Grand Tournament, a 40k tournament with 80 participants at the time that Becker describes as the biggest in the UK.
Becker’s tournament grew rapidly each year, ballooning to 900 participants in 2019 but the “speed bump” prompted him to go full-time organizing tournaments.
A new era for the UKTC began with COVID-19: Becker took stock and decided to hire more staff to make it feasible to run additional tournaments.
In 2018, the London GT was the UKTC’s largest event. It hosted tournaments for 14 game systems, including the UK Worlds qualifiers for Star Wars Legion, Star Wars X-Wing, and Star Wars Armada.
