ESL to abandon national tournaments in Counter-Strike 2

Big tournament operator ESL announced the closure of ESL National Championship program, which hosted national tournaments in various countries. According to the press release, this will happen after CS2's full-fledged release.

The company explained that organizing tournaments for teams from specific countries made sense in the early stages of the pro scene, but now, given globalization and the merger of countries into large regions, such a concept is no longer viable.

ESL has canceled national events planned for the end of this year for Benelux, France, Spain and Turkey. In turn, teams from Oceania, Brazil, Germany, Poland, as well as Great Britain and Ireland will compete at the last ESL National Championship tournament, after which the project will be completely closed.

The organizers also emphasized that the discontinuation of national tournaments will not have any impact on the representation of Polish and German teams at their respective home IEM events in Katowice and Cologne.

Notably, national-based competitions from ESL in CS:GO have existed since 2015. For the past few years, these events have been part of the ESL Pro Tour system, which gave participants the opportunity to qualify for ESL Pro League.

Origin: esl.com