2013 Ladder Season 4 is drawing to a close, and all ladders will be locked soon.

Here’s what this means for you:

• During the 2013 Season 4 lock, you can’t be promoted or demoted from your current league or division, and your bonus pool stops growing.
• Though you’ll be locked to a league and division, you'll still be able to play out your remaining bonus pool and compete for standing within your division until the end of the season.
• If you're pursuing a league promotion, then you still have a chance to get there. The 2013 Season 4 lock will go into effect on Monday, August 19 at 12:01 a.m. PDT.

The hidden ratings used to determine promotions and demotions will continue to be used for matchmaking purposes, and will continue to update during the 2013 Season 4 lock. So if you play significantly better or worse than your assigned league at the time of the lock, you may find yourself in a different league when 2013 Season 5 begins (after you play your first placement match). Your games during the lock still count.

Season 5 will begin at 12:01 a.m. PDT on Monday, August 26, 2013, right after the conclusion of the WCS 2013 Season 2 Finals at gamescom. Season milestone rewards will be locked in at this time, and bonus pools will reset. The game will continue doing matchmaking and league placement using results from the previous season.

We will have an updated map pool for Season 5, and we’re happy to announce that the 1v1 portion of the map pool will mirror the map pool used in all regions for WCS Season 3. We’ll have more specifics on map pool changes for you soon.
With the beginning of Season 5, we will be applying a free character name change to all accounts that do not have one available at that time. Character name changes do not stack (you can only have one free name change at a time), so if you’ve been thinking about changing your name in StarCraft II, you have until August 26 to make that decision.

To learn more about this year’s ladder season and related subjects, check out our League, Ladders, and Seasons FAQ.