Okay. So I've done some research. It's possible that Ateez is just hosting a general global event -- it looks like the Embassies in Australia and Seattle have been making preparations for similarly-named events that take place at around the same time. It seems possible that Ateez might be doing some sort of livestream or recording to kick off the pre-lims (or maybe even the finals?? I don't know; it looks like there are a couple of language barriers here).

However, this is all still pretty weird? I can't find much about it, and the stuff I have found is not lining up. For example, they say that the finals will be held in Changwon (in person, apparently -- the Seattle application specifies that applicants must be eligible for overseas travel). The only festival that I could find is the Changkwon K-Pop World Festival hosted by KBS, but KBS hasn't updated the website since 2019. I also can't find anything about the preliminary US competitions because there's also not a lot of information about dates, times, or locations. Neither the Australian nor American embassies have mentioned a Q&A session with Ateez. Furthermore, none of them have promoted the event using an unlisted YouTube video edited by an instagram artist :/

To summarize: I still have no clue what's going on.