What Is Race to World First?
Race to World First (RWF) is the unofficial world championship of Mythic raiding: the first guild to kill a new raid tier's final boss on Mythic claims the World First title. It is not a Blizzard bracket tournament with seeding and prize pools — it is a community race that became a multi-day livestream event, with org broadcasts, casters, pull trackers, and sponsor integrations.
World First kills have existed since early WoW, but the modern broadcast format took off when 
Method livestreamed the 2018 Uldir race on Twitch (Method cites ~263k live viewers for that breakthrough). Today 
Liquid, 
Echo, and Method (plus CN and other NA/EU guilds) race in parallel while fans follow every percent on Raider.IO and Warcraft Logs.
Sources: Method — What is RWF?; Raider.IO / Warcraft Logs race hubs.
How an RWF Works (Heroic Week → Mythic)
Most modern tiers follow the same skeleton:
- Heroic week: Normal and Heroic open first. Guilds clear, learn fights, and start split runs — farming the same bosses on many characters to funnel loot onto the 20-player Mythic roster.
- Mythic week: Mythic has usually opened one week later — but not this tier: the Venomous Abyss schedule puts Mythic in the same week as Normal and Heroic. Early bosses often fall in hours; mid and end bosses become multi-day walls with hundreds of pulls.
- Hall of Fame: Blizzard has published the cap for this tier — the first two hundred guilds worldwide to defeat Ula'tek on Mythic earn the Hall of Fame feat of strength and the title “Famed Slayer of Ula'tek”. Still no cash prize; the recognition is the reward.
- Economics: Consumables, repairs, BoE buys, and gold for crafts are a real race cost. There is no official Blizzard prize purse; top orgs run on sponsors (e.g. Alienware as Liquid's presenting partner for Midnight).
Midnight Season 1 was unusual: three launch raids (Voidspire, Dreamrift, March on Quel'Danas) with staggered Mythic opens, so the "race" was to 9/9 across the tier, not a single 8-boss instance. Boss lists and loot bands are in our Midnight raid guide.
Midnight Season 1 Recap — Liquid's Four-Peat
Liquid defeated 
Midnight Falls (L'ura) on April 6, 2026 for World First, after a razor-close race with Echo. Liquid's own recap cites 474 pulls on the final; Wowhead coverage rounds to 473. The defining storyline: Liquid "killed" the boss into a Mythic-only secret fourth phase (not on Heroic), handed Echo free intel overnight, then closed the race the next day on a near-perfect pull. Echo took World 2nd (~493 pulls on the final per Hotspawn; Warcraft Logs lists 494 on Midnight Falls); Method contested third (~502 pulls on the final per WCL).
This was Liquid's fourth consecutive RWF after Nerub-ar Palace, Liberation of Undermine, and Manaforge Omega.
| Date (2026) | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Mar 17 | Heroic week — Voidspire, Dreamrift, March on Quel'Danas open on Normal/Heroic |
| Mar 24 | Mythic opens for Voidspire + Dreamrift; early WFs (e.g. Melee Mechanics on Averzian, Nurfed on Vorasius) |
| Mar 25–27 | Liquid takes key WFs including Dreamrift's  Chimaerus, then Voidspire end boss  Crown of the Cosmos (Mar 27) |
| Mar 28–30 | Gap week — splits, reclears, Heroic prep while waiting on Mythic Quel'Danas |
| Mar 31 | Mythic March on Quel'Danas opens |
| Apr 3 | Liquid World First  Belo'ren (long wall; ~196 pulls — Blizzard Watch / WCL) |
| Apr 4–5 | Midnight Falls wall + secret-phase discovery / fake 0% |
| Apr 6 | Liquid World First L'ura (~474 pulls) — Midnight RWF over |
Sources: Team Liquid (Apr 7, 2026); Raider.IO Tier 35 coverage; Warcraft Logs RWF; Hotspawn / Blizzard Watch day logs.
Recent World First Winners
Hardest-difficulty final-boss World Firsts from Sepulcher through Midnight. Guild colors + icons: Liquid, Echo, Method (historical Method wins predate this table window).
| Raid | Year | Winner | Runner-up | Duration / notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sepulcher of the First Ones | 2022 | Echo WF | Liquid | Long modern race (Jailer) |
| Vault of the Incarnates | 2022 | Echo WF | Liquid | 11-day race; 258 pulls on Raszageth (Method recap) |
| Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible | 2023 | Liquid WF | — | Liquid's modern streak begins |
| Amirdrassil, the Dream's Hope | 2023 | Echo WF | Liquid | Tight Echo win |
| Nerub-ar Palace | 2024 | Liquid WF | — | TWW S1 — four-peat starts here |
| Liberation of Undermine | 2025 | Liquid WF | — | TWW S2 |
| Manaforge Omega | 2025 | Liquid WF | Echo (close) | Dimensius WF |
| Midnight S1 (VS / DR / MQD) | 2026 | Liquid WF | Echo | ~2 Mythic weeks; ~474 pulls on L'ura |
For the live Midnight DPS meta that these races shaped, see the Midnight tier list.
How to Watch and Track RWF
When a race is live, you do not need a ticket — you need tabs:
- Org streams: Twitch/YouTube for Team Liquid, Echo, and Method (player POVs + desk commentary).
- Progress trackers: Raider.IO global coverage (day blogs, pull counts) and the Warcraft Logs RWF tracker (top guilds, live standings, region/boss filters).
- Between races: VODs (Liquid Day 1–N archives, Method recaps) and community threads on r/CompetitiveWoW.
Between tiers, the same skill ceiling shows up in keys — our Mythic+ guide covers how the broader player base gears toward raid readiness.
Why Races Take 7–14 Days
Viewers often ask why the best players in the world need two weeks. Short answer: Mythic end bosses are designed as research projects, and the soft costs compound.
- Splits before and during Mythic burn calendar time so mains sit in better gear than a single lockout allows.
- Pull count walls (100–500+ on a final) mean days of learning — Midnight's secret phase literally added a full unknown fight mid-race.
- Gold and consumables: flasks, potions, food, enchants, repairs, and BoE snipes across a 20-man roster for 12–16 hour days are expensive even for sponsored guilds.
- Sleep / region offset: NA and EU trade the lead overnight; one region's "morning" is the other's progress window (exactly how Echo used Liquid's secret-phase discovery).
- Hotfixes and exploits: Blizzard can invalidate strategies mid-race; guilds plan comps with backup specs ready.
That is why clean kills look "easy" on the final pull — the two weeks before are the real product.
Current Race: The Venomous Abyss Is Live
The Race to World First is on right now on 
The Venomous Abyss, the eight-boss raid of Patch 12.1 — The Curse of Ula'tek. It opened with Midnight Season 2: August 18 in NA, August 19 in EU. There was no Heroic-only week — Mythic opened in the same week as Normal and Heroic.
As of August 25, 2026 (week 2), read on Method's own progress desk (method.gg/raidprogress, posts through 16:19 BST):
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| Aug 24 ~17:45 BST | Method World First Mythic Vashnik the Malignant |
| Aug 24 | Evolve World 2nd Vashnik; Liquid World 3rd Vashnik (pull 20) |
| Aug 25 ~11:52 BST | Method World First Mythic Sszorak |
| Aug 25 afternoon | Echo and CN guild 清水 (Clear Water) on Vashnik; Method / Liquid / Echo still splitting and reclearing. Ula'tek is not down. |
Sources: Method raidprogress desk (read 25 Aug 2026); Wowhead RWF coverage 382351; Blizzard news 24295087. Standings move by the hour — treat the table as a dated snapshot, not a live tracker.
The eight bosses
The raid sits on The Coiled Isle, inside the Vaults of Atal'Utek.
- Nek'zali the Soulcoiler
- Entombed Sentinels · The Lost Explorers (wings)
- Vashnik the Malignant · Sszorak · The Twin Fangs
- The Coiled Altar
- Ula'tek — the World First kill, Hall of Fame boss (first 200 worldwide)
Mythic Ula'tek drops the Primeval Skyfriend mount. Season 2 also adds the Tidebound Grotto Lair (Nymrissa Wavecaller) — a one-boss Lair is not the RWF target.
Unlock leftovers that do not move the race: Aug 25 Story Mode + RF2, Sep 1 RF3, Sep 8 RF4. Full Season 2 picture: Midnight Season 2 guide.
When Is the Next RWF After Venomous Abyss?
Not announced. The next Race to World First after this one is the Mythic race on whatever raid Patch 12.2 / Midnight Season 3 opens. Blizzard has published no date for 12.2.
The cadence math — the same estimate we use on the Midnight release-date page: Midnight has shipped a patch every eight weeks (12.0.5 April 21, 12.0.7 June 16, 12.1 August 11). Projected forward that points to patch 12.2 around late January 2027 (community estimate, not official). The first hard signal will be the 12.2 PTR.
Until then, this page answers “when is the next RWF” with: this one is live, and the one after it travels with Season 3. That is the successor query — do not wait for a content pivot. Season 2 runway and the Season 3 watch: Season 2 guide.