ESL announce IEM Melbourne 2025
IEM Melbourne will run from April 21st to 27th, ESL announced on January 20. The $300,000 event will feature 16 of some of the best Counter-Strike teams in the world.
This is great news for CS fans in Australia as they didn't get a tier-one event in 2024. The last tier-one event organized in Australia was IEM Sydney 2023, the first big CS2 LAN ever. Complexity made it to the grand finals of that historic event, where FaZe defeated the American squad in the finals.
But, IEM Melbourne also marks ESL's return to the city after organizing ESL Challenger Melbourne there in 2024.
"The Australian crowd consistently brings something special to our Counter-Strike events," Marc Winther, ESL's Director of Game Ecosystems, said in an official statement. "The atmosphere in the arena is always unique, filled with energy and fun, and that comes across online as well."
The IEM Melbourne 2025 announcement comes one week after Valve warned tournament organizers that several 2025 events were missing location information. The location of the event must be informed a year in advance for tier-one tournaments. With the announcement of IEM Melbourne and ESL Pro League Season 22 (Stockholm), ESL has solved all issues that were pending.
All the 16 IEM Melbourne slots will be defined via invites based on the Valve Ranking System (VRS). The first ten invites will go to the top 10 teams in the global ranking, while the remaining six will be sent in accordance with the European, Americas, and Asia rankings.
IEM Melbourne will split the 16 teams into two double-elimination groups. The top three teams from each group will advance to the single-elimination playoffs, with each group winner proceeding directly to the semifinals. All matches of the tournament will be best-of-three series, minus the grand finals, which will be a best-of-five.
