Rainbow Six Siege’s Six Invitational 2026 grand final peaked at 264,383 concurrent viewers on February 15, 2026, the single most-watched match of the entire tournament (Esports Charts). The event paid out $3,000,000 in prize money across 20 teams, with champions FaZe Clan collecting $1,000,000 after a 3:1 win over Team Secret (Liquipedia). On Steam, the game still averaged more than 60,000 concurrent players through the first half of 2026, while Ubisoft reported that the free-to-play relaunch, Rainbow Six Siege X, pushed monthly active players past 10 million in March 2026 (Steam Charts; Ubisoft, via siege.gg). This report pulls together more than 50 data points from Ubisoft’s own financial and player disclosures, Steam Charts’ concurrent-player tracking, Esports Charts’ viewership numbers, and the competing prize-money databases at Liquipedia and Esports Earnings to map where Siege stands roughly a decade after its December 2015 launch.
TL;DR
- Six Invitational 2026 grand final peaked at 264,383 concurrent viewers on February 15, 2026 (Esports Charts).
- SI 2026 paid out $3,000,000 total prize money; champion FaZe Clan earned $1,000,000 (Liquipedia).
- SI 2026 averaged 69,595 viewers and racked up 8,281,763 hours watched across 119 hours of airtime (Esports Charts).
- Steam Charts recorded 56,147 concurrent Siege players at last check, with a 2026 monthly average as high as 72,777 in March (Steam Charts).
- Steam’s all-time concurrent peak for Siege stands at 200,476 players (Steam Charts).
- Ubisoft says Rainbow Six Siege X monthly active players peaked above 10 million in March 2026, on a base of 85 million registered accounts (Ubisoft, via siege.gg; Icon Era).
- Liquipedia’s database puts total Siege esports prize money at $76,425,119 from 2016 to 2025; Esports Earnings counts $49,885,252.94 across 573 tournaments over roughly the same period (Liquipedia; Esports Earnings).
- Siege ranked 5th among esports titles on Twitch in 2025 with 34.76 million hours watched, behind Counter-Strike 2, League of Legends, Dota 2, and Valorant (Esports Charts).
- Ubisoft’s ShieldGuard and BattlEye anti-cheat systems issued close to 19,000 permanent bans in January 2025 alone (bo3.gg, via Ubisoft).
- Siege X relaunched as free-to-play in June 2025 with 18 operators available to new players at no cost (Ubisoft).
- The Siege map pool has more than doubled since 2015 launch, from 11 maps to 26 today (Ubisoft, via community reporting).
- Ubisoft’s overall portfolio topped 130 million monthly active users in the December 2025 quarter, up 3% year over year, with Siege named a key growth driver (Ubisoft, via Gaming Amigos).
1. Player Base and Concurrent Players
Steam Charts’ concurrent counter is only a partial window into Siege’s real audience, since the bulk of competitive and casual play still happens on console. Ubisoft’s own disclosures put monthly active players above 10 million in March 2026, the title’s highest single-month figure since the pandemic-driven surge of 2020, on a cumulative base of 85 million registered accounts (Ubisoft, via siege.gg; Icon Era). Even so, Steam’s numbers track the same seasonal pattern Ubisoft describes: concurrency jumped when Siege X launched free-to-play in June 2025 and again around the March 2026 post-Six-Invitational season, then cooled into the following autumn.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Current concurrent Steam players | 56,147 | Steam Charts |
| 24-hour peak concurrent players | 65,310 | Steam Charts |
| All-time peak concurrent players | 200,476 | Steam Charts |
| Average concurrent players, March 2026 | 72,777 | Steam Charts |
| Average concurrent players, June 2026 | 62,505 | Steam Charts |
| Average concurrent players, June 2025 (Siege X launch month) | 80,447 | Steam Charts |
| Ubisoft-reported monthly active players, peak (March 2026) | 10+ million | Ubisoft, via siege.gg |
| Registered accounts, cumulative | 85 million | Ubisoft, via Icon Era |
Outlier: Siege’s monthly Steam average nearly halved between March 2026 (72,777) and November 2025’s low of 31,877, underlining how much the game’s PC crowd concentrates around major content drops and the Six Invitational window rather than staying flat year-round. For how Siege’s concurrency compares across the wider Steam catalog, see our Steam platform statistics.
2. Six Invitational 2026: Results and Prize Money
The 2026 edition of Siege’s world championship returned to Paris for the first time since 2021, and FaZe Clan’s Brazilian-rostered lineup became back-to-back champions after beating Team Secret in the grand final. FaZe Clan’s 3:1 grand-final win earned the organization $1,000,000, its second consecutive Six Invitational title (Liquipedia). The $3,000,000 total pool has now held flat at that level for seven straight editions, 2020 through 2026, even as other tactical shooters have seen their flagship prize pools swing more with sponsor cycles.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total prize pool | $3,000,000 | Liquipedia, Six Invitational 2026 |
| 1st place (FaZe Clan) | $1,000,000 | Liquipedia |
| 2nd place (Team Secret) | $450,000 | Liquipedia |
| 3rd place (Team Falcons) | $240,000 | Liquipedia |
| Participating teams | 20 | Liquipedia |
| Venue | Adidas Arena, Paris | Liquipedia |
| Event window | February 2 to 15, 2026 | Liquipedia |
3. Six Invitational 2026: Viewership
Viewership climbed steadily as the bracket narrowed, a pattern typical of single-elimination playoffs where each match carries more weight than the last. The Team Secret vs. G2 Esports semifinal set a new tournament peak of 159,700 concurrent viewers, only for the record to fall again two days later when the grand final hit 264,383 (Esports Charts). Across the full event, Siege drew 69,595 average viewers and 8,281,763 hours watched over 119 hours of broadcast, generating an estimated $5,238,237 in advertising-equivalent media value.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Grand-final peak viewers | 264,383 (Feb 15, 2026) | Esports Charts, Six Invitational 2026 |
| Tournament average viewers | 69,595 | Esports Charts |
| Total hours watched | 8,281,763 | Esports Charts |
| Broadcast airtime | 119 hours | Esports Charts |
| Estimated advertising-equivalent media value | $5,238,237 | Esports Charts |
| Semifinal peak, Team Secret vs. G2 Esports | 159,700 | Esports Charts, semifinal report |
| Opening-days peak, Shopify Rebellion vs. G2 Esports | 107,800 | Esports Charts, opening viewership report |
| Group-stage average viewers, days 1 to 3 | 57,200 | Esports Charts |
Outlier: Team Secret drew the largest average per-match audience of any team, over 80,000 concurrent viewers, despite finishing as runner-up, a reminder that viewership leaders and tournament winners are not always the same organization. Coordination over voice comms never stops in these best-of-five series, the same real-time callouts that make Discord voice changers popular with scrims and community servers built around the game.
4. Historical Six Invitational Results (2017 to 2026)
Prize money at Siege’s marquee event climbed steeply early on, then flattened out entirely: it took three years to go from a $100,000 regional-style event to a $3,000,000 major, and it has not moved since. Every Six Invitational from 2020 through 2026, seven editions in a row, has paid out exactly $3,000,000, one of the longest prize-pool plateaus of any major tactical-shooter championship still running (Liquipedia). Location has moved almost every year instead, cycling through Montreal, Paris, Stockholm, Sao Paulo, Boston, and back to Paris.
| Year | Prize Pool | Champion | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | $100,000 | Continuum | Montreal |
| 2018 | $500,000 | PENTA Sports | Montreal |
| 2019 | $2,000,000 | G2 Esports | Montreal |
| 2020 | $3,000,000 | Spacestation Gaming | Montreal |
| 2021 | $3,000,000 | Ninjas in Pyjamas | Paris |
| 2022 | $3,000,000 | TSM | Stockholm |
| 2023 | $3,000,000 | G2 Esports | Montreal |
| 2024 | $3,000,000 | w7m esports | Sao Paulo |
| 2025 | $3,000,000 | FaZe Clan | Boston |
| 2026 | $3,000,000 | FaZe Clan | Paris |
Source: Liquipedia, Six Invitational.
5. All-Time Esports Prize Money and Twitch Rankings
Two of the most-cited esports tournament databases track Siege’s competitive history differently enough to matter. Liquipedia counts $76,425,119 in total Siege prize money from 2016 through 2025 across a broad tier of tracked tournaments, while Esports Earnings counts $49,885,252.94 across a narrower set of 573 tournaments covering February 2016 to May 2025, the gap coming down to which lower-tier and regional events each site includes. Both agree on the broad shape of the story: Brazil is the sport’s financial center, its players and organizations having earned more prize money than any other country, and most of that money, roughly 77% by Esports Earnings’ count, has been paid out at LAN events rather than online qualifiers.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Total prize money, 2016-2025 (Liquipedia count) | $76,425,119 | Liquipedia, Portal:Statistics |
| Total prize money, Feb 2016-May 2025 (Esports Earnings count) | $49,885,252.94 across 573 tournaments | Esports Earnings, Rainbow Six Siege |
| Top career earner (Liquipedia ranking) | BriD, $857,155 | Liquipedia |
| Top career earner (Esports Earnings ranking) | Shaiiko, $790,685.20 | Esports Earnings |
| Top-earning country | Brazil, $13.3 million | Esports Earnings |
| Prize money share from LAN/offline events | ~77% | Esports Earnings |
| Siege hours watched on Twitch, 2025 | 34,760,000 | Esports Charts, 2025 Twitch rankings |
| Rank among Twitch esports titles by hours watched, 2025 | 5th, behind CS2, League of Legends, Dota 2, Valorant | Esports Charts |
Outlier: despite ranking only 5th on full-year Twitch hours, Siege’s Six Invitational alone generated roughly 24% of the game’s entire 2025-scale annual Twitch total in about two weeks of February, a concentration around one annual event that flatter, more schedule-heavy titles like CS2 do not show to the same degree. Much of that Twitch audience arrives through individual creators casting or reacting to matches, the same streaming crowd that leans on voice effects built for streaming to build a distinct on-air persona.
6. Anti-Cheat and Account Security
Ubisoft has leaned harder on its in-house ShieldGuard system since pairing it with Siege X, and enforcement volume swings sharply with each content patch. Permanent bans peaked at nearly 19,000 in January 2025, with ShieldGuard responsible for about 12,000 of them, before a patch release cut the following month’s total to under 7,000 (bo3.gg, via Ubisoft). March 2025 bans climbed back above 6,500, almost all through ShieldGuard rather than BattlEye, suggesting Ubisoft’s proprietary detection has become the primary enforcement layer rather than a supplement to the third-party engine.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent bans, January 2025 | ~19,000 | bo3.gg, ban statistics report |
| ShieldGuard share of January 2025 bans | ~12,000 | bo3.gg, via Ubisoft |
| Permanent bans, February 2025 | under 7,000 | bo3.gg, via Ubisoft |
| Permanent bans, March 2025 | 6,500+ | bo3.gg, via Ubisoft |
| Historical average permanent bans per month (post Operation Prep Phase) | 11,000+ | Ubisoft, via community reporting |
7. Siege X: Free-to-Play Relaunch and Content Growth
Ubisoft’s biggest structural bet on Siege’s next decade was dropping the entry price to zero. Rainbow Six Siege X launched free-to-play in June 2025, giving new players 18 operators at no cost and pairing the switch with an engine overhaul, an audio pass, and a new Dual Front game mode, changes Ubisoft credits for a monthly-active-player figure that ranked third-highest in the game’s history, trailing only the pandemic-era peaks of 2020 (Ubisoft, via Gaming Amigos). New account creation reportedly doubled year over year in the quarter after launch, and the map pool has grown from 11 at the December 2015 debut to 26 today, 25 standard PvP maps plus one Dual Front-exclusive arena.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Siege X free-to-play launch date | June 2025 | Ubisoft, via Gaming Amigos |
| Free operators available to new players | 18 | Ubisoft |
| Total maps, Year 11 Season 1 | 26 (25 standard + 1 Dual Front-exclusive) | Ubisoft, via community reporting |
| Maps at original December 2015 launch | 11 | Wikipedia |
| New account acquisition growth, Q2 FY2025-26 | ~2x year over year | Ubisoft, via Icon Era |
| MAU rank vs. Siege’s own history (Q1 FY2025-26) | 3rd-highest ever | Ubisoft, via Gaming Amigos |
A large share of that new-account growth traces back to streamers introducing free-to-play viewers to the game, many of them running OBS voice changer setups to keep an on-stream identity consistent across the titles they play.
Summary: Rainbow Six Siege by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Six Invitational 2026 grand-final peak viewers | 264,383 (Feb 15, 2026) | Esports Charts |
| Six Invitational 2026 total prize pool | $3,000,000 | Liquipedia |
| Six Invitational 2026 champion prize (FaZe Clan) | $1,000,000 | Liquipedia |
| Six Invitational 2026 average viewers | 69,595 | Esports Charts |
| Six Invitational 2026 hours watched | 8,281,763 | Esports Charts |
| Current concurrent Steam players | 56,147 | Steam Charts |
| All-time peak concurrent Steam players | 200,476 | Steam Charts |
| Average concurrent players, March 2026 | 72,777 | Steam Charts |
| Ubisoft-reported monthly active players, peak (March 2026) | 10+ million | Ubisoft, via siege.gg |
| Registered accounts, cumulative | 85 million | Ubisoft, via Icon Era |
| Total esports prize money, 2016-2025 (Liquipedia) | $76,425,119 | Liquipedia |
| Total esports prize money, Feb 2016-May 2025 (Esports Earnings) | $49,885,252.94 | Esports Earnings |
| Top career earner (Liquipedia) | BriD, $857,155 | Liquipedia |
| Siege hours watched on Twitch, 2025 | 34,760,000 (5th among esports titles) | Esports Charts |
| Permanent bans, January 2025 | ~19,000 | bo3.gg, via Ubisoft |
| Siege X free-to-play launch | June 2025 | Ubisoft |
| Free operators for new players | 18 | Ubisoft |
| Total maps, Year 11 Season 1 | 26 | Ubisoft |
Methodology and Sources
Every figure in this roundup traces back to a named primary source or a Tier 2 aggregator that discloses its own underlying source, cross-referenced across at least two independent trackers wherever both Liquipedia and Esports Earnings, or Steam Charts and Ubisoft, published overlapping figures.
- Steam Charts, Rainbow Six Siege player count history
- Liquipedia Rainbow Six Wiki, Six Invitational 2026
- Liquipedia Rainbow Six Wiki, Six Invitational history
- Liquipedia Rainbow Six Wiki, Portal:Statistics
- Esports Charts, Six Invitational 2026 tournament hub
- Esports Charts, Six Invitational 2026 opening viewership
- Esports Charts, Team Secret vs. G2 Esports peak viewership
- Esports Charts, 2025 top esports games on Twitch
- Esports Earnings, Rainbow Six Siege game page
- bo3.gg, Ubisoft ban statistics report
- Ubisoft financial disclosures, via siege.gg
- Ubisoft financial disclosures, via Gaming Amigos
- Ubisoft portfolio statistics, via Icon Era
- Wikipedia, Rainbow Six Siege (used only for launch-era map count and release-date context)
Data watch: Six Invitational prize pool and viewership numbers from Liquipedia and Esports Charts are typically finalized within days of the event closing; Steam Charts updates concurrent-player figures continuously; Ubisoft discloses player and net bookings figures on its quarterly and full-year earnings calendar; ban statistics are published irregularly whenever Ubisoft or community trackers report a new patch-cycle breakdown.
Last updated: July 24, 2026. We review and refresh this roundup quarterly as Ubisoft, Esports Charts, Liquipedia, and Steam Charts publish new figures.