ESL will be hosting the first CS:GO Major of 2020 in Rio de Janeiro, according to a . Bra🤪nded as the “ESL One Rio Major,” the event will be the first CS:GO Major to take place in South America.
ESL is a mainstay tournament organizer 💖in professionalꦓ Counter-Strike, putting on multiple💙 tournament circuits including I🅺ntel Extreme Masters, ESL One, and ESL Pro League. They have also hosted more CS:GO Majors than any other company, the first being EMS One Katowice 2014, the second everꦑ Major tournament in Global Offensive. They have since hosted six total Ma✤jor tournaments, the most recent being IEM Katowice earlier this year. The Katowice event🌃 was their first Major event following a three-year break since ESL One Cologne 2016.
ESL now looks to be hosting the first Major tournament of 2020, set to take place in Rio 💖de Janeiro, Brazil. Though the country has h🌞oused no prior Majors, ESL has put on a number of tournaments in various Brazilian cities. The ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals were held in São Paulo in 2016, and they later put on an ESL One tournament in Belo Horizonte in 2018. Sister company DreamHack has also had its own stop in Brazil, having hosted a DreamHack Open tournament in Rio de Janeiro in April of this year.
Though the event is currently unconfirmed, the ESL One Rio Major is expected to run from May 11-24th, 2020, according to set by Valve earlier this year. The event will see twenty-four teams face off across three different stages, presumably using a Swiss system group stage and🥃 a single-elimination play-off bracket. In keeping 🎶with recent format changes, it can also be expected that the preceding Minor tournaments will take place in Rio as well.
The champions of the ESL One Rio Major will take home the lion’s share of the $1,000,000 prize pool. It is currently unclear how this event will f𒆙🦄actor into the third season of the Intel Grand Slam, which offers its own $1,000,000 grand prize to the team that wins four eligible events over the allotted time. The IEM Katowice Major did offer a point towards the second Intel Grand Slam season, though the rules have changed going into 2020.
ESL have not confirmed any detailꦍs regarding this event.