IEM Katowice Major 2019

Did You Know?

• The defending champions were Astralis, after winning their second championship at the FACEIT Major: London 2018.
• The New Challengers stage took place from February 13 to February 17, 2019, at the ESL Arena.

Format

The Major cycle began with four regional Minors: Americas, Asia, CIS, and Europe. Two teams from each Minor advanced to the Major, and the third-place teams from each Minor competed in a third-place qualifier to send two more teams. The Major featured twenty-four teams: the top eight from the FACEIT Major: London 2018 were designated Legends, and the remaining sixteen teams—those placed ninth through fourteenth at the London Major plus the ten Minor qualifiers—were Challengers.

The tournament was split into three stages. The New Challengers stage was a Swiss-system tournament among all Challengers; the top eight advanced to the New Legends stage, while the bottom eight were eliminated. The New Legends stage was a second Swiss-system group stage featuring the eight Legends from London and the eight advancing Challengers; the top eight advanced to the playoffs, and the bottom two teams lost automatic invites to the next Major.

The final New Champions stage was an eight-team, best-of-three, single-elimination bracket. ESL introduced changes for this Major: progression or elimination matches in rounds three, four, and five of the Swiss stages were best-of-three; seeding was determined by aggregated team rankings rather than prior placements; and an Elo rating system replaced the Buchholz system for matchups after the first round.

Minors

Each regional Minor featured eight teams and a $50,000 prize pool, with $30,000 for first place, $15,000 for second, and $5,000 for third. No teams received direct invites to the Minors; all Minors were held in Katowice to avoid visa issues. The group stage used a GSL double-elimination format with four teams per group; opening matches were best-of-one, while winner's, loser's, and decider matches were best-of-three. The top two from each group advanced to a four-team, best-of-three, double-elimination bracket, with the top two teams qualifying for the Major.

The winner of the winner's match became the first seed in the New Challengers stage, and the winner of the loser's match became the second seed. The CIS Minor qualifier had sixteen teams, with Winstrike Team automatically invited and seven others invited; eight more qualified through online qualifiers. The CIS Minor took place January 16–20, 2019. The Europe Minor qualifier also had sixteen teams, with mousesports automatically invited and seven others invited; eight more qualified through online qualifiers.

The Europe Minor took place January 16–20, 2019, with ENCE and Team Vitality qualifying for the main qualifier. The Asia Minor featured two teams from Oceania, two from China, two from East Asia, one from Southeast Asia, and one from the Middle East; each qualifier had four invited teams and four from online qualifiers. MVP PK was the first team to qualify for any Katowice 2019 Minor, and Renegades completed the Asia Minor lineup.

Teams competing

HLTV.org rankings from February 11, 2019, are shown. Teams in the top 30 that failed to qualify include North (#7), mousesports (#10), Ghost Gaming (#16), Valiance (#20), 3DMAX (#24), Heroic (#25), forZe (#26), Luminosity Gaming (#27), Sprout Esports (#29), and x6tence Galaxy (#30).

New Champions stage

The New Champions stage, also called the Playoffs, was a best-of-three single-elimination bracket held at the Spodek from February 28 to March 3, 2019. Brackets were revealed after FaZe defeated Cloud9 in the last map of the group stages. Teams were seeded based on their New Legends stage record and strength of schedule. Casters included HenryG, Sadokist, Vince Hill, and moses.