ESL One Cologne – New Details About Qualifiers Announced

ESL One: Cologne 2017 will be held from July 7th to July 9th in LANXESS Arena in Cologne, Germany and this year’s edition of the tournament will be one of the biggest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament ever. Teams that can be characterized currently as the best CS:GO teams in the world will be participating in this tournament. They will compete for the prize pool of $250,000. ESL has not revealed many details about the tournament. However yesterday they released an announcement about the detailed plans for the qualifiers. It will be held before the main event.

According to the ESL, 16 teams will be participating in the main event. Out of those 16 teams, 12 will receive direct invitations for the main event. The remaining four spots will be reserved for the teams that go through and eventually win in the qualifiers. When it comes to the region of European Union, nine teams has already confirmed that they will be participating in the open qualifiers. These nine teams have received invitations for the open qualifiers. This means that other teams who want to participate in the open qualifiers will have to sign up very soon. The first round of the open qualifiers in Europe will be played on April 23rd. The second round of the open qualifiers for Europe will be played on April 29th.

Closed qualifiers

The recent press release from ESL dealt mostly with the closed qualifiers, and it has stated that 12 teams will be featured in the closed qualifiers. Nine of those 12 teams will also receive the direct invitation for the tournament, but ESL has not announced which nine teams they will be. The tenth team in the closed qualifiers will be the team that wins the ESL Meisterschaft that will be held from May 6th to May 7th in Duisburg, Germany. The remaining two teams in the closed qualifiers will be the winners of the two rounds of open qualifiers. According to the ESL statement, the closed qualifiers for the ESL One: Cologne will feature a best-of-three series.

It will feature a single elimination bracket format of the competitions. Additionally, it is also very important to mention that the top two teams that get invited to the closed qualifiers will automatically advance to the quarter-finals of the closed qualifiers.

The first round or the Round of 12 in the closed qualifiers will be played on May 20th. The four matches of the quarter-final and the matches of the semi-final will be played on Sunday, May 21st. Closed qualifiers for the ESL One: Cologne will not feature a final match. Two teams that win in the semi-finals will secure their spots at the main event of the tournament.

Final Thoughts

ESL One: Cologne 2017 might be more than two months away, but the interest for the tournament has already begun. As we are getting closer that interest will continue to grow. However, with revealing the names of the teams that will be directly imitated to the main event and the closed qualifiers, the interest for this tournament will skyrocket.