The prize on offer once again is a cool 20,000 USD and the much coveted VIP trip to the Ballon d’Or Gala where you’ll be able to rub shoulders with the greatest footballers on the planet.

There will be 6 online FIWC 2012 qualifiers in total and here are the details:

Online Season 1: 1-31 December, 2011

Online Season 2: 5 January-25 January, 2012

Online Season 3: 1 February-25 February, 2012

Online Season 4: 1 March-25 March, 2012

Online Season 5: 1 April-25 April, 2012

Online Season 6: 1 May-18 May, 2012

As well as six oppotunities in the online arena there will also be eleven live qualifiers over the next few months and we’ll bring you details of these as and when we get them. For more information, head over to the FIWC 2012 website.

So FSB fans, are any of you going to try and win the top prize on the pro FIFA gaming scene?

The first live qualifiers will be held at Playstation Access events in Glasgow and Manchester. Details of both events below, if you haven’t registered and are planning to just turn up, you’ll need the password, which is “442″. More details can be found on the Playstation access Facebook Page. Let us know if you’re planning to pop along in the comments. If you go tonight, you might just bump into our very own Adam Bhatti, who took one of the lovely photos below. Looks cosey.

Access Manchester
Hope Mill, 113 Pollard Street, Ancoats, Manchester

It’s broken its own World Record by some margin too. FIWC 2010 waltzed in to the record books with an eye watering 775,000 participants, which has now been easily topped by FIWC 2011′s astonishing 869,543 entrants, wow. With this years pre-registering for the FIWC 2011 at an all time high it was “rumoured” very early on that the tournament would go on to break its own World Record, but still a fantastic achievement none the less.

“The Guinness World Records – Gamer’s Edition is packed with extraordinary feats from the field of computer gaming, and we’re proud to count the FIWC among them.”

This does however leave us with two very big questions. Can the FIWC break the one million barrier next year? And when will an equivalent competition come to the Xbox360?

Francisco Cruz of Portugal and Javier Munoz of Colombia faced off recently in LA for a prize of $20,000 and an invitation to the FIFA Ballon d’Or Gala.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Looking forward to the comments on this one. To get you started, I’ve pulled a quote from the Official FIWC site.

“…in what several spectators claimed was the best EA SPORTS™ FIFA 11 match ever witnessed.”

Chew that over whilst you watch the video.

A special mention goes to UK entrant Adam Winster who put in a brilliant performance to come 4th although the general feeling from LA was that he deserved to win his semi-final comfortably and in his own words, “that’s FIFA”. For full details of how it went down check out @AsimTanvirs Twitter timeline which details the exciting events as they unfolded.

Also, check out the official article on the FIWC website where there’s a gallery with pretty girls in too.

We”ll be bringing you an exclusive FIFA Soccer Blog FIWC Final gallery over the weekend.

As most of you will know Adam Winster was victorious beating Rob Brewster 2-1 in the UK Grand Final. The good news though is that both will be jetting off to L.A to represent the UK FIFA community as Rob had already won another FIWC qualifying event. Good luck to both lads in the world finals and let’s bring the prize home this year.

To see the UK FIWC Live Coverage GO HERE

And also huge thanks to SweetpatchTV for digging this one out, top stuff.

There are some big names on this list tonight including last years champion Rob Brewster from FIFAPlayer.net who was very recently interviewed about his FIWC exploits on FIFA.com. For details of all 32 entrants head over to Sweetpatch.tv who have the scoop.

Good luck to everyone tonight in Liverpool and we’ll keep you up to date on the results.

UPDATE: @AdamWinster has won the FIWC UK Grand Final 3-1! But @Rob_Brewster is also off to LA having already qualified. Congratulations!

You can qualify by winning a live event in your region or by coming in the top two of FIWC Online Season 5 (1st April – 25th April) or Season 6 (1st May – 25th May) what are you waiting for?

For the full article visit the Official FIWC Site

Well don’t be because a 100% confirmed date for the UK FIWC Grand Final has been announced:

“Tuesday 19th April”

That should put an end to the confusion and hopefully no one’s travel arrangements have been affected. The venue in Liverpool is still to be confirmed.

Thanks to Sweetpatch.tv for the information.