Fnatic set to join EG, Vitality, and more at EPICENTER Moscow

EPICENTER has unveiled another team directly invited to the upcoming EPICENTER Moscow event, naming Fnatic as the fifth team to receive a direct invite to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament taking place in December.

Fnatic joins Natus Vincere, AVANGAR, Evil Geniuses, and Team Vitality as squads that will skip the open qualifiers and instead be seeded directly into the $500K tournament. 

The European Open qualifiers for EPICENTER Moscow will get underway on October 28 and the CIS qualifier will begin on November 21. The closed qualifiers will follow soon after, with Europe’s scheduled for October 30 while they run from November 23 for the CIS participants. As of now, it does not look like teams from the Americas will receive an opportunity to qualify for the tournament as no qualifiers for North or South America have yet been announced.

According to EPICENTER, dates for the Chinese Open Qualifiers will be announced at a later date.

EPICENTER Moscow could see a Fnatic vs EG rematch

EPICENTER Moscow group stage is slated to take place from December 17 to 19, with the finals taking place on December 21 and 22.

The tournament could prove to show some interesting rematches, especially between Fnatic and Evil Geniuses. The two teams met just last weekend in the grand finals of the StarSeries i-League Season 8 Finals. EG walked away with what felt like an easy win, defeating Fnatic in one-sided fashion with a 2-0 sweep.

Despite the loss, Fnatic has been a team on an upward trajectory recently. They took home first place at DreamHack Masters Malmӧ earlier in October and added the second-place finish at StarSeries behind EG this past weekend.

The entire roster seems reenergized with the addition of Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin and could be poised to make a deep run at EPICENTER. These accomplishments are an impressive turnaround for a team that couldn’t get out of its own way earlier in 2019.

Tickets are already on sale for EPICENTER Moscow, with three different tiers available at three different price points.

Fnatic’s next match will be against BIG during ECS Season 8’s next slate of games.