ESL announce qualifiers for IEM World Championships in Katowice
ESL have announced the dates and format of the IEM World Championship Katowice qualifiers. With ESL moving all their events to a standardized 16 team format, eight of the slots on offer will be available through qualifiers.
IEM Katowice itself will be running from February 27th to March 4th, with $500,000 on the line, as well as another notch towards claiming the Intel Grand Slam. Of the eight qualification spots on offer, four will be for Europe, two will be for North America and Asia and Oceania get one each.
The North American qualifiers will be made up of two, unlimited slot single-elimination open qualifiers. Each open qualifier will be following a best-of-one format up until the final game, which will be a best-of-three. Both open qualifiers will be offering a single slot to the eight-team closed qualifier, which will be a single-elimination knockout, featuring best-of-three matches.
Notably there is no qualification spot for South American-based teams. In a tweet Michal Blicharz, VP Pro Gaming at ESL and lead on IEM, stated a "single qualifier for both won't work", and that they'd be looking at integrating South American qualifiers for future events.
The schedule for the North American IEM Katowice qualifiers are:
- Open Qualifier #1 - January 20th-21st
- Open Qualifier #2 - January 25th-26th
- Closed Qualifier - January 30th
Full details on invites to both the main event and closed qualifiers are yet to be announced, and links to the tournament will be released "in the coming weeks".
