As part of Valve’s new minor championship circuit, StarLadder have announced a minor tournament.

StarLadder have announced that they will be hosting one of the new minor CS:GO tournaments in 2016. The event will take place in Minsk, Belarus and will feature a $50,000 prize pool. The concept behind minor tournaments is to promote small teams and give them a chance at participating at major events, allowing them to prove their worth on the international scene.

Below is a list of countries from which teams are eligible for the tournament:

Russia Belarus Georgia Latvia Moldova Armenia Lithuania Kyrgyzstan Azerbaijan Estonia Tajikistan Uzbekistan Ukraine Kazakhstan Turkmenistan

*Teams will only be considered if three or more team members are citizens in their respective region and if they haven't participated in the previous major tournament.

The open qualifiers for the tournament will consist of two single elimination events, with a maximum of 512 participants. All of the matches will be best-of-ones and maps will be vetoed. You may register here for qualifier #1 and here for qualifier #2.

The closed qualifiers will feature the eight top teams from the open qualifiers and eight teams that will be invited to the event. Aforementioned sixteen teams will then be drawn into groups A, B, C and D. The top two teams from each group will then move on to the LAN Finals.

The finals of the event will take place in Minsk, Belarus, where eight teams will be split into two groups of four. The four finalists that received their slot in the qualifiers will be joined by four invited teams to fight it out for the $50,000 prize pool.

The prize pool distribution is as described below:

1st place- $30,000
2nd place- $15,000
3rd and 4th place- $2,500

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