Valve have tonight announced that the steps to Majors are drastically changing. On top of the offline qualifier that MLG have yet to officially announce, Valve are partnering up with ESL, MLG, StarSeries & PGL to give teams outside of the Major a chance to qualify for the next Major in Columbus in the United States, March 2016.
Aptly named “Regional Minor Championships” these Championships will give teams outside of the top 16 teams from DreamHack Cluj-Napoca a chance of gaining extra money as all the regional’s will dish out $50k in Prize Money, whilst giving the extra glamour and production value for spectators.
Taken from the official CS:GO Blog:
CS:GO attracts the most highly-skilled professional gamers across the globe, and new competitors are emerging every day.
In January we will hold four Regional Minor Championships, which are opportunities for regions to continue to develop world-class talent. The events will spotlight players who have not recently gained exposure by participating in a CS:GO Major Championship.
Each will feature high-quality production, with the event’s playoffs streamed live in-client to regional viewers. In addition to a $50,000 prize pool, the winning team of each Regional Minor Championship will be invited to participate in the offline qualifier for MLG Columbus 2016.
Regions:
CIS, hosted by StarLadder
Europe, hosted by PGL
Asia, hosted by ESL
Americas, hosted by MLGTeams are eligible to participate provided the majority of their players are citizens of a country in their respective region, and none of their players were Legends or Challengers in the previous CS:GO Major Championship.
Join us in January as we showcase rising stars in the CS:GO scene and take our first steps toward the Major Championship in Columbus!
It should be interesting to see whether some of our high profile UK Teams actually may make it to these Regional Championships. It is a massive chance for the UK Scene to get it’s name out there, and I’m sure the amount of fans and players alike of the UK Scene will be bitterly disappointed if our teams don’t make it there.
PGL have already announced their Minor Championships for Europe, it will be hosted in Bucharest, Romania and will be open for 128 teams in each of the four online qualifiers which will determine what 8 teams will make it to the Minor Championships.
We will continue to monitor any of the UK teams that enter any of the Online Qualifiers, and keep you updated through our website over the course of this period.
