League News · 2026 Season

Dallas Playoff Picture Tightens on the Last Day of the Regular Season

Houston and Las Vegas ran twelve races on Saturday and neither team could separate. The Bandits and the Venom finished level at 18 points, which in Grid League means nobody goes home yet. A tied match triggers a Grid-LOCK, one final race under a three-minute cap, and the winner takes the match without adding a point to the score. Venom crossed at 2:00.44. Houston came in seven and a half seconds later, and the West Conference standings moved with them.

That was the last of three Walking Dead matches at the Mesquite Convention Center, the opening day of the league’s Dallas weekend. By the time the floor cleared, two teams had clinched playoff berths and one had been eliminated. The three matches that run today decide everything still open.

Wolves vs. Wild

New York beat Atlanta 19-10 in the afternoon match, and the roster sheet explains as much of that as the racing did. The Wild arrived without two of their heaviest strength specialists and without Amanda Fischer, the best player on their roster. Walking Dead is the wrong day to be missing that kind of weight. The format leans on heavy loading, and Atlanta failed to finish five races, starting with the Partner Forward that opened the match.

The Ladder ran the same direction. New York scored 65 to Atlanta’s 38, and a Ladder margin above ten points zeroes out the losing side, so the Wild took nothing from a race they were still working through when the cap hit. Both teams came up short on the Sprint Relay, so the closing race ended 0-0 instead of handing three points to a winner.

The Wolves are 3-1 and hold the most wins in the East in their first season in the league. Some of that margin belongs to who was not on the floor across from them, and the rest of it they earned.

Palms vs. Flight

South Beach opened the day with a 23-10 win over Carolina and closed it out by taking the Sprint Relay. The Palms led the Ladder 61-38 and won the Jack and Jill outright.

The loss ends Carolina’s postseason. At 0-3 in a conference where four teams already have two wins, the Flight cannot reach a playoff spot. The record undersells what they did to get here. Carolina came into 2026 as a late addition, with a fraction of the runway every other team had to recruit and train, and they still put a full roster on the Grid for a full season against opponents who had been building for years.

Bandits vs. Venom

Las Vegas took the Ladder 61-48, and the thirteen-point margin zeroed Houston out under the rule that gives the losing side nothing once the gap passes ten. Houston answered with a bonus flag on the Jack and Jill and won that race at 2:41.44 for three points. Las Vegas got three of its own on the opening Ringer Point race after Houston finished over the cap.

Twelve races later the board read 18-18.

Houston threw a challenge flag during the Grid-LOCK over box jump faults out of the plane. Officials found faults on review but ruled they did not clearly change the race, so the flag was spent and the result stood.

Where the Playoff Race Stands

The top three teams in each conference reach the playoffs, and the top seed gets a first-round bye. Seeding runs on match wins. When teams are level on wins, the tiebreaker is Season Rank Total, which sums how a team has ranked against the rest of the league in every race it has run.

East Conference

West Conference

Sunday Decides the Playoff Picture

Three matches close the regular season today, all of them in the Hang Loose format. The Lions host the Breakers at 10:30, the Venom host the Flight at 1:15, and the Bandits host the Wild at 4:00, all times Central.

Fort Lauderdale can take the East’s top seed and the bye by beating Palm Beach. Lose, and the bye goes to New York. The final East spot belongs to South Beach unless the Breakers beat the Lions or the Wild beat the Bandits, and either result throws the third seed to a Season Rank Total tiebreak that will not resolve until every Hang Loose time is entered.

The West runs on the same afternoon. Houston takes the top seed and the bye with a win. If the Bandits lose and the Venom beat the Flight, Las Vegas takes it instead.

And if Houston and Las Vegas both lose, the number one seed in the West falls to a team that finished its season two weeks ago. Southwest Florida will not run a single race today.

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