Valve confirm 32-team Majors, unveil new Major qualification path

Earlier today Valve released a major update to their CS Major Supplemental Rulebook on GitHub, with the update confirming the previously reported transition to a 32-team Major along with announcing the new format for the Major and how teams will qualify for this new era of Majors.

With the Major expanding to 32 teams, Valve have announced the addition of a third Swiss stage during the Major itself, which will result in Majors being around three to four days long to accommodate these extra matches. Unfortunately, it does not appear that Valve have changed the format of these Swiss stages at all, meaning they will likely be Bo1 with Bo3 elimination and progression matches.

As for how teams will qualify to the 32-team Major, Valve have announced the creation of Major Regional Qualifiers (MRQ), which will replace Regional Major Rankings (RMR) events moving forward. Like RMRs, these events will be split between the three major CS2 regions (Americas, Europe, and Asia), with the Americas and Europe having sixteen teams while Asia will have eight teams.

Importantly, unlike RMR events, these MRQ events are allowed to be held online by the tournament organizer operating the Major, a major departure from the past where LAN events almost always served as the Major qualifier.

For the BLAST.tv Austin Major, the EU and Americas MRQ events will grant six spots to the Stage 1 of the Major while the Asian MRQ will grant four spots.

The sixteen teams from the MRQ will qualify Stage 1 of the Major whereupon eight teams will qualify to Stage 2 of the Major and be joined by eight teams where one invite is assigned to a region for every team of that region that reached Stage 3 of the previous Major (the top 16).

As for Stage 3 one invite is assigned to a region for every team of that region that reached the playoffs of the previous Major (the top 8).

This invite system is fairly complicated but in brief, this is what these changes mean for the Americas region:

Americas VRS ranking

• 1st to Stage 3

• 2nd-5th to Stage 2

• 6th-21st to MRQ (6 spots in Stage 1)

Overall, this means that for the BLAST.tv Austin Major, the Americas will have eleven teams in attendance, four more teams than were at the Perfect World Shanghai Major.