ESL Challenger Atlanta to give Pro League spot

Counter-Strike 2 is coming fast and North American fans will get a few chances to see the game in action as Fragadelphia heads to Chicago and ESL is set to hold an ESL Challenger event in Atlanta in the early weeks of December.

DreamHack Atlanta was last held in 2019, where Heroic would take home first place as they worked their way through a tough international gambit of tier-two rosters. The $100,000 event would not be held again due to the COVID-19 pandemic, until this year, albeit under a different name.

While still being held during DreamHack Atlanta from December 15th through December 17th, the ESL Challenger event will now also grant an ESL Pro League Season 19 spot in addition to the regular prizepool of $100,000. The last LAN event hosted in North America that granted an ESL Pro League spot was the ESL Pro League Season 10: Americas which was hosted in Burbank, California in late 2019.

Since then, the NA scene has become almost unrecognizable as back in 2019 Pro League had not yet been truly decimated, there were thriving organizations supporting an entire region, and top-tier LANs were still hosted regularly throughout the country.