WARFORGE 2026 — The 3AM Incident — Global prod outage tournament · Remote · Squad-basedAPPLICATIONS CLOSE MAY 18 — 14 days remaining — manually reviewed · seats limited Event day May 24, 2026 — 20 days away — 10:30 AM – 6:30 PM your time (GMT+0:00) · Official GMT+5:30 (IST) Win Claude Pro (1 Year) · Elite Program · War Room Specialist Badge · Hall of Fame3 roles per squad — Incident Commander · SME #1 · SME #2 — only IC executes3 rounds — First Pager → Escalation → The 3AM Incident — 20 teams → 10 → 5 Kubie AI enabled in all rounds — hints allowed in Round 1 only — calm recovery scores highestRCA is mandatory — no submission = no ranking — this is how real SRE teams operateWARFORGE 2026 — The 3AM Incident — Global prod outage tournament · Remote · Squad-basedAPPLICATIONS CLOSE MAY 18 — 14 days remaining — manually reviewed · seats limited Event day May 24, 2026 — 20 days away — 10:30 AM – 6:30 PM your time (GMT+0:00) · Official GMT+5:30 (IST) Win Claude Pro (1 Year) · Elite Program · War Room Specialist Badge · Hall of Fame3 roles per squad — Incident Commander · SME #1 · SME #2 — only IC executes3 rounds — First Pager → Escalation → The 3AM Incident — 20 teams → 10 → 5 Kubie AI enabled in all rounds — hints allowed in Round 1 only — calm recovery scores highestRCA is mandatory — no submission = no ranking — this is how real SRE teams operate
WARFORGE
THE 3AM INCIDENTGLOBAL PROD OUTAGE TOURNAMENT
Remote · Global · Squad-based
REGISTRATION CLOSES IN
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THE ARENA IN 33 SECONDS
SEE WHAT YOU'RE SIGNING UP FOR
INFRA THRONE · FIELD BRIEFINGREF · WF-3AM / IR-GLB
The moment
IT'S 3 AM. PRODUCTION IS DOWN.
Live signalIncoming queue
01Your phone rings.
02Alerts are firing.
03Dashboards are noisy.
04Nothing is obvious.
The tournamentWhat you're walking into
WHAT IS INFRA THRONE WARFORGE?
A global war room tournament where engineers:
experience realistic production outages
debug like real teams
make decisions under pressure
This is notWhat we refuse to simulate
01no step-by-step guide
02no correct answer
03no one telling you what to do
This isWhat you're graded on
01real infrastructure
02real failure patterns
03real trade-offs
04real decision-making
The 3AM Feeling
THE MOMENT EVERYONE KNOWS
This is the kind of pressure your squad will face. Incomplete information. Cascading failure. Clock running. Every action scored.
INCIDENT LIVE
env: production · region: us-east-1
00:00:00 elapsed
How to Apply
PARTICIPATION MODEL
Two ways in. One war room. Squad of exactly 3.
Apply Solo
Assigned to a squad of 3
Roles finalized before the event
No team required at signup
Apply as a Team
Pre-formed squad of exactly 3 engineers
All three apply together
Roles agreed before submission
20teams start (60 engineers)
→
10advance to Round 2
→
5reach the Final
Roles
ONE COMMANDER. TWO EXPERTS. ONE VERDICT.
Only the Incident Commander executes. Others think, guide, and validate. This mirrors real production war rooms.
Event hours10:30 AM – 6:30 PMOfficial window · GMT+5:30 (IST)
FormatFully remoteOnline · anywhere
Event timeline · GMT+5:30 (IST) · Local: GMT+0:00
01
10:30 AM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Event Day Opens
Soft check-in window. Log in early, meet your squad, confirm roles, explore the UI, and test terminals. No scoring. No pressure.
02
11:30 AM – 12:00 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Opening Circle
What Warforge is (and isn't). Expectations, fair play, mindset, and how scoring actually works. Reminder: calm wins.
03
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Round 1: First Pager
BattleOps · 3 hints allowed · Kubie AI enabled · Light chaos. Restore service, stabilize metrics, submit basic RCA.
04
1:00 PM – 1:30 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Cool-down + Social
Casual discussion, teams decompress. Admins score quietly. No announcements yet.
05
1:30 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Round 1 Results
Top 10 of 20 squads advance. Others are thanked, praised, and invited to watch. All participation benefits guaranteed.
06
1:45 PM – 3:00 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Round 2: Escalation
Hard BattleOps · No hints · Kubie AI enabled · Medium chaos. Wrong fixes create new failures. Shortcuts backfire. Trade-offs matter.
07
3:00 PM – 3:45 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Break + RCA Drafting
Teams draft RCA calmly. No stopwatch pressure. Admins review deeply. Light networking. This is where real learning happens.
08
3:45 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Round 2 Results
Top 5 of 10 squads advance to the Final. Others receive appreciation, feedback pointers, and EliteOps invite hints.
09
4:00 PM+ · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Final Round: The 3AM Incident
EliteOps · No hints · Kubie AI · Heavy & adaptive chaos. Multi-service failure. Conflicting signals. No obvious root cause. Open window — not timeboxed harshly.
10
~5:30 PM+ · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Post-Final Wind-down
Final RCA review and deliberation. No rush. Accurate scoring over speed. This can take 30–60 minutes if needed.
~6:30 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST) · Finale
Winners Announcement
Winner reveal. Short squad interviews. Hall of Fame induction. Thank-you notes. Community applause. This feels earned, not rushed.
The Gauntlet
THREE ROUNDS. INCREASING DIFFICULTY.
No panic. Each round escalates in pressure, ambiguity, and consequence. Calm recovery scores highest.
01Round 1
First Pager
BattleOps
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Restore service. Stabilize metrics. Submit basic RCA. Kubie AI enabled. Light chaos — designed to test thinking, not break you.
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
3 hints
Top 10 of 20 teams advance
02Round 2
Escalation
Hard BattleOps
1:45 PM – 3:00 PM · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Wrong fixes create new failures. Shortcuts backfire. Trade-offs matter. Kubie AI enabled. Medium chaos.
1:45 PM – 3:00 PM
No hints
Top 5 of 10 teams advance to Final
★Final Round
The 3AM Incident
EliteOps
4:00 PM+ · GMT+5:30 (IST)
Multi-service failure. Conflicting signals. No obvious root cause. Tests: leadership · judgement · calmness · sequencing. Kubie AI enabled. Heavy & adaptive chaos.
4:00 PM+
No hints
You don't win this round. You earn it.
The Scorecard
HOW YOU'RE JUDGED
Not based on speed alone. Five dimensions. Calm recovery scores highest.
Time to Recovery30%
Decision Quality20%
RCA Quality20%
Team Contribution20%
Hints Used10%
Sample Round Score
Fast recovery (8m 12s)+ 120 pts
High decision quality score+ 95 pts
Strong RCA submission+ 80 pts
Panic restart without diagnosis− 60 pts
Round Total235 pts
Every action is tracked. Every mistake is punished.
Rules
Panic restarts reduce score
Risky shortcuts are penalized
Hints used reduce final score
No RCA = No ranking
Required submission
RCA is mandatory
Every squad files a post-incident record before rankings lock. Four pillars — incomplete means incomplete.
01What failedBlast radius, scope, and blast surface
02Why it failedRoot cause — not a symptom list
03Signals missedWhat the data already said
04PreventionHow this class of failure is stopped next time
No RCA → no ranking. Recovery alone doesn't qualify — the write-up is part of the score.
The Stakes
REWARDS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER
Every participant leaves with something real. The best leave with proof they can handle production.
Winner · 1st Place
Top Squad
Free Claude Pro (1 Year)
Infrathrone Elite Program (Free)
Infrathrone Internal hiring opportunities
Hiring community access (6 countries)
War Room Specialist Badge (1 year)
Hall of Fame placement
Interviews & spotlight
2nd Place
Second Squad
Infrathrone Elite Program (Free)
Hiring opportunities
Hiring community access
War Room Specialist Badge
Hall of Fame placement
3rd Place
Third Squad
Infrathrone Elite Program (Discount)
Hiring opportunities
Hiring community access
War Room Specialist Badge
Hall of Fame placement
All Participants
Battle Tested
Participation Certificate
RCA Feedback
1-month DevOps Park access
Priority future event invites
Beyond the podium
Swag fades. What stays is signal: clarity under fire, leadership in the war room, and the receipts when production refuses to behave.
Season one
Built for signal, not optics
Season one is the pilot arena. No invented testimonials — these are the outcomes we engineered Warforge around from day one.
Signal, not slides
Warforge is built for triage under ambiguity — the same muscle you use when dashboards lie and the clock does not.
Squad-shaped pressure
Three roles, one scoreboard. Commander, Ops, Signal — every handprint on the outage is visible when the round ends.
First season, full stakes
Season one is the pilot run: tighter field, sharper feedback, and a format we will keep hardening with every cohort after this.
Who should join
If you have carried a sev, you already speak our language.
Warforge is not a trivia night. It is for people who have stared at a flat line on success rate, debated rollback vs hotfix, and meant it when they said “I am on it.”
On-call at ugly hours
Owned a bad deploy end-to-end
Want proof, not participation badges
DevOps
CI/CD, infra glue, prod paths
SRE
SLOs, error budgets, wake-up muscle
Cloud
Multi-region, cost vs latency
Platform
Paved roads, guardrails
MLOps
Model pipelines, infra under load
Kubernetes
Clusters under stress
Backend
Services in the blast radius
Students
Hungry, ready to prove it
Got Questions
QUESTIONS FROM THE WAR ROOM
The 3 AM Incident is a global, competitive war-room tournament where DevOps, SRE, Platform, and MLOps engineers debug realistic production outages, operate under real-world pressure, and work in structured incident response teams. This is a production-grade incident simulation scored on thinking, leadership, and recovery quality — not a guided lab or tutorial.
Apply if you have hands-on DevOps / SRE / Platform / MLOps experience, want to test yourself under real production pressure, or are interested in incident leadership roles and career-relevant recognition. Do not apply if you are looking for step-by-step guidance, guaranteed success, or beginner tutorials.
You can do either. Register Solo — you will be automatically assigned to a squad of 3. Register as a Team — pre-formed squad of exactly 3 engineers. No team larger or smaller than 3 is allowed.
Each squad has one Incident Commander (only person with write/execute access — owns all decisions and leads the incident) and two Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) with read-only access who analyze logs and metrics, provide guidance, and support RCA. Only the Incident Commander can execute commands.
Because real incidents fail when everyone acts at once, there is no clear decision owner, and panic overrides structure. This event tests decision-making and leadership — not typing speed.
Three rounds: Round 1 (First Pager — BattleOps with 3 hints), Round 2 (Escalation — Hard BattleOps with no hints), and Round 3 (The 3AM Incident — EliteOps final). Teams are eliminated after each round based on scoring. 20 teams start, 10 advance to Round 2, and 5 reach the Final.
Round 1 allows 3 hints and Kubie AI is enabled. Round 2 allows no hints but Kubie AI remains enabled. Round 3 allows no hints but Kubie AI is enabled. Using hints negatively impacts scoring.
Teams are evaluated on: Time to Recovery (30%), Decision Quality (20%), RCA Quality (20%), Team Contribution (20%), and Hints Used (10%). Speed alone will not win this tournament. Calm recovery scores highest.
RCA (Root Cause Analysis) is a structured explanation of what failed, why it failed, what signals were missed, and how recurrence can be prevented. Every team must submit an RCA. No RCA = No ranking — even if recovery was successful.
Infrathrone ensures live admin monitoring, manual overrides, and environment resets if required. If platform issues occur, fair time adjustments or replays may be applied.
Yes. Sessions may be recorded for learning purposes, replay analysis, and Hall of Fame content. Top teams may be featured publicly. By participating, you consent to recording.
The winner receives Free Claude Pro (1 Year), Infrathrone Elite Program access, hiring community access across 6 countries, a War Room Specialist Badge (1 year), Hall of Fame placement, and interviews. 2nd and 3rd place receive Elite Program access, hiring opportunities, and badges. All participants get a certificate, RCA feedback, and 1-month DevOps Park access.
Application is free. Participation is free. Selection is strictly limited and manually reviewed. Future editions may introduce paid tiers.
Sunday, 24 May 2026. Official schedule uses India Standard Time — GMT+5:30 (IST). On this device (GMT+0:00), the main broadcast window is approximately 10:30 AM – 6:30 PM (equivalent to 4:00 PM–midnight IST). Exact timings are shared with selected participants in advance.
20 teams (60 engineers) start Round 1. Top 10 teams (30 engineers) advance to Round 2. Top 5 teams (15 engineers) reach the Final Round.
