From Cologne to EPL Season 11, CSGO tournament schedule is packed

Starting with the move of ESL Pro League’s season 11 to online play in March and Valve’s rescheduling of ESL One Rio 2020, almost every CSGO event has been shifted. To complicate matters, Valve added three more tournaments to the schedule. Called Regional Major Ranking tournaments, ESL’s Road to Rio, CS Summit 6, and an unannounced third tournament serve as pathways to CSGO’s 2020 Major. 

Here’s a list of the remaining tournaments of 2020 and their new dates, participating teams, and prize pools.

CS Summit 6

Set as the second Regional Ranking tournament to award CSGO Major qualification points, CS Summit 6 will award points that teams need to qualify for ESL One Rio, CSGO’s only Major of 2020. Like most tournaments this year, Beyond the Summit has split up CS Summit 6 up between North America and Europe, meaning that technically the tournament will have two winners.

The change to an online format is a huge departure for the Summit series of tournaments, where the event’s main draw is the face-to-face interaction between cast, talent, and players.

Dates: July 24 to July 5

Location: Online

Teams: 16 in Europe and 8 in North America

Confirmed Teams:

• Europe
  • G2 Esports
  • Team Vitality
  • FaZe Clan
  • BIG
  • mousesports
  • Ninjas in Pyjamas
  • ENCE
  • OG
  • Team Heretics
  • Heroic
  • GODSENT
  • North
  • Movistar Riders
  • FATE
  • Copenhagen Flames
• North America
  • FURIA
  • Evil Geniuses
  • Team Liquid
  • 100 Thieves
  • Gen.G
  • Cloud9
  • Chaos Esports Club

Prize Pool: $75,000 and Regional Major Ranking points depending on placement

DreamHack Open Summer

Like all DreamHack events, DreamHack Open Summer is part of ESL’s Pro Tour, the tournament organizers broader tournament structure. It also serves as a pathway for teams to qualify for ESL’s other events. All of ESL’s events on this list, including ESL One Cologne, are part of ESL’s plan to tie together its yearly offerings and create a worldwide LAN league. DreamHack Open tournaments often see unknown teams participate, so it can be a great way for fans to dive deeper into the scene.

Dates: August 8 to August 16, 2020

Location: Online

Teams: 8 in Europe and 8 in North America (unannounced)

Prize Pool: $90,000

ESL One Cologne 2020

Known to fans as the “Cathedral of Counter-Strike,” the LANXESS Arena has been home to ESL One Cologne since 2014. This year however, Germany’s social isolation measures might mean that the arena will be empty. There are two options, and either one is looking equally possible. Either ESL One Cologne will take place as a LAN event without a live audience, or the entire tournament will be played online.

ESL has indicated that the event will be held as a LAN, but both options take a little shine off of one of CSGO’s most prestigious tournaments.

Dates: August 21 to August 30

Location: Cologne, Germany (could still be moved online)

Teams: 16 teams

Prize Pool: $1,000,000

ESL Pro League Season 12

ESL Pro League Season 12 is still scheduled as a combined tournament, with European and North American teams competing against one another in a LAN setting. Fnatic won season 11 of ESL Pro League as part of a dominant season, so this season of EPL will have some appealing storylines for CSGO fans.

Dates: League play starts on September 2, 2020

Location: Unannounced

Teams: 24 teams total from all regions

Confirmed Teams:

• G2 Esports
• Team Vitality
• FaZe Clan
• Natus Vincere
• FURIA
• fnatic
• Astralis
• BIG
• Evil Geniuses
• Complexity
• Team Liquid
• mousesports
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• ENCE
• 100 Thieves
• Team Spirit
• Renegades
• TYLOO
• ORDER
• BOOM
• Isurus Gaming
• Sharks Esports

Prize Pool: Unannounced

Flood of CSGO tournaments continues after player break

Even with the Counter-Strike Professional Players Association and tournament organizers moving the CSGO player break to July, there is a ton of CSGO being played throughout the summer. The massive amount of Counter-Strike on the schedule has already caused several players to take a step back from competition. Astralis players Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander and Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth’s burnout has already led to a scandal of sorts surrounding their organization, and Complexity owner Jason Lake tweeted about player exhaustion after his team won BLAST Premier Spring.

Thankfully, Complexity and the rest of the CSGO world will get a break during the month of July. After that, though, CSGO is off to the races again.