The next Race to World First opens August 18, 2026, and it's a two-tier launch: The Venomous Abyss, an 8-boss Mythic raid, and The Tidebound Grotto, a smaller 1-boss encounter releasing the same day. Together they're the next real test for the guilds currently sitting atop the standings.
What's confirmed
Opens: August 18, 2026
The Venomous Abyss — 8 Mythic bosses, in kill order:
- Nek'zali the Soulcoiler
- Entombed Sentinels
- Vashnik the Malignant
- The Lost Explorers
- Sszorak
- The Twin Fangs
- The Coiled Altar
- Ula'tek
The Tidebound Grotto — 1 Mythic boss: Nymrissa Wavecaller, following the same single-encounter format as this cycle's Sporefall — a shorter, self-contained race that tends to resolve fast and hard, with the margin between first and second measured in pulls rather than days.
Pull counts, kill times, and raid compositions for every boss above go live on PullCount as soon as the tier is pullable and logs start reporting — we're not guessing at difficulty or tuning ahead of time, since that's the kind of thing that only becomes real once guilds are actually attempting it.
Who's expected to contend
The same handful of guilds have defined every recent race: Liquid, Echo, and Method are the perennial front-runners, with the field behind them tightening every tier. Check the current guild rankings to see who's coming into August 18th with momentum.
How to follow along
PullCount tracks pull counts, kill order, and raid composition for every guild in the race, refreshing automatically as new logs come in — no manual refreshing, no digging through Discord threads. Once the tier opens, both raids will have live pages:
New to some of the terminology you'll see in the standings — prog, soft enrage, cutting edge? The glossary covers it in plain English.
Make your picks before it locks
If you want more than a spectator seat, RWF Pick'em opens predictions for both tiers — call the winner, call the first world-first kill, call the pull counts. Picks lock when Mythic opens on the 18th, so get them in before then.