The first major tournament of 2015 featuring $250,000 provides chance to eight teams to join the competetion through the open qualifiers.
Recently it was announced that ESL One will return to Katowice and will start off the series of major tournaments which feature significantly bigger prize pool thanks to the support of Valve and the community. It was revealed that so-called 'Legends' are directly invited to the event for their top-8 placement in the last major tournament of the 2014 - Dreamhack Winter.
The remaining eight slots are dedicated to the qualifiers which have two parts - online and offline. Eight teams topping their regional brackets will advance to the offline part where they will compete with another eight teams, who have got direct invites to the second part. From these sixteen teams only eight will advance to the main event from two groups with double elimination best-of-1 bracket. The teams will be supported by ESL and Valve with travel and accommodation expenses for visiting the offline part.
The online part has 4 slots dedicated to two separate European qualifiers, 1 slot for Poland, 1 for CIS and 1 for North America. The first European part is starting today, January 26th. The exact schedule and registration links can be found on the official ESL website.
The full list of teams invited to offline part is not revealed yet. So far, Espilon eSports and ESC Gaming have already got their invites.
Source: ESL official website, their Twitter page
Headline image by Helena Kristiansson and ESL.
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