One of the most important tournament circuits in CS:GO esports, the ESL Pro Tour will undergo major changes next year.
EPT Championship events are set to update qualification for IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne. Starting with IEM Katowice 2023, ESL will no longer use the structure of EPT scores. After that, the tournament organizer will mostly invite the leading champions of the EPT tournaments or use the ESL world rankings.
This means that IEM Cologne 2022 will be the last EPT Championship in its current format. Teams will continue to participate in the Play-In stage of IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne, half of which will advance to the group stage to join eight invited teams.
Regionalized ESL world rankings will be evaluated after each EPT Championship and depending on the performance of a region, ESL may redistribute slots at the next EPT Championship. EPT Masters invitations will be distributed according to the announced events.
There will be a maximum of three EPT event champions directly invited to the play-in phase of EPT Championship events in 2023. In the absence of EPT affiliated events, these three places will be filled according to the ESL world ranking.
“We are on a mission to simplify the ESL Pro Tour,” ESL said in a press release. “Our current structure is causing confusion, where our teams invite to an EPT Championship through two ranking systems (EPT points and ESL world rankings).”
In September 2019, ESL partnered with 15 CS:GO teams creating the EPT ecosystem, giving them a permanent place in the ESL Pro League.
