Legislation threatens Russian attendance for Katowice

Earlier this week, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland announced that Russian citizens holding Schengen tourist visas will be barred from entering the aforementioned countries starting on September 19, 2022. This decision has a direct impact on esports-related events and Russian players in those nations.

Prominently, this decision will have an effect on the upcoming IEM Katowice, which is scheduled to start in February 2023. In the announcement, the nations announced that they will "restrict the entry into the Schengen area for the Russian citizens traveling for tourism, culture, sport and business purposes."

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have agreed on a common regional approach and hereby express their political will and firm intention to introduce national temporary measures for Russian citizens holding EU visas in order to address imminent public policy and security threats and restrict the entry into the Schengen area for the Russian citizens traveling for tourism, culture, sport and business purposes.

There are a few notable exceptions for humanitarian cases, individuals with family, and residency, for Russian citizens inside the nations, but by including "sports and business purposes" it clearly threatens the involvement of Russian teams ad players from playing or traveling for events.

Notably, this ban would affect OG, Natus Vincere, North American-based organization Cloud9, Entropiq, forZe, Outsiders, and G2. With all the aforementioned teams appearing in the HLTV Top 30, the absence of these teams and their players would be a blow to the usually star-studded event.

With the ban coming into place on September 19th, it will affect those that already have European visas. While the ban does not fit the current Schengen agreement, its members have permitted nations to impose sanctions.