PGL Major Krakow

The eleventh CS:GO Major, held in Kraków, Poland, where Gambit Esports became the first Asian team to win a Major.

PGL Major: Kraków 2017, also known as PGL Major 2017 or Kraków 2017, was the eleventh Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship. It is the first Major organized by the Romanian organization PGL and it was held in Kraków, Poland from July 16 to 23, 2017. It featured sixteen professional CS:GO teams from around the world. Eight teams qualified directly based on their top eight placement in the previous Major, ELEAGUE Major 2017, while another eight teams qualified through the Offline Major Qualifier. The PGL Major was the fourth consecutive major with a prize pool of 1,000,000.

Lore & Background

The playoffs consisted of eight teams. Astralis, Fnatic, Gambit Esports, North, SK Gaming, and Virtus.pro were returning Legends while BIG and Immortals were new Legends. FaZe Clan and Natus Vincere lost their Legends status after failing to advance from the group stage. The grand finals featured two underdogs: Gambit Esports, which defeated Fnatic and Astralis, and Immortals, which defeated BIG and Virtus.pro. The Major concluded with Gambit defeating Immortals 2–1 in a relatively close best-of-three series, marking just the third time a non-European team won a Major (the Brazilian Luminosity/SK roster won two Majors) and the first time an Asian team won a Major.

Reader's Guide

The format remained the same as the previous Major. The top eight teams from Atlanta 2017 ("Legends") were automatically invited to Kraków 2017. The remaining eight spots were filled by teams that advanced from the PGL Major Krakow 2017 Main Qualifier. The Krakow 2017 Main Qualifier was a 16-team Swiss-system tournament consisting of the bottom eight teams from Atlanta 2017, as well as eight teams promoted from four regional qualifiers.

The top eight teams at the Main Qualifier, teams with three wins, then advanced to the Major as the "Challengers". The group stage of the Major was also a 16-team Swiss-system group stage. The top eight teams at the end of the group stage, teams with three wins, advanced to the playoff stage and became the new Legends. Teams with three losses were eliminated, but earned an invite to the next Major's offline qualifier.

All playoff matches were best-of-three, single elimination. The map pool was changed for this major. Dust II was taken out of the active map pool and Valve reintroduced Inferno, which had been taken out of the map pool and revamped. The veto process was also changed for best-of-one games.

One team decided whether to veto maps first or second. The team that vetoes first removed two maps. The second team vetoed three maps. The first team then chose one of the two remaining maps.

The second team then chose the side it wanted to start on. The best-of-three veto process was unchanged. Each team first banned a map, leaving a five-map pool. Each team then chose a map, with the opposing team selecting which side they wanted to start on for their opponent's map choice.

The two map picks were the first two maps in the best-of-three. The teams then each banned one more map, leaving one map remaining for the best-of-three decider if necessary.