Berlin International Gaming, Guild Esports, FunPlus Phoenix and SuperMassive Blaze will join Fnatic, Acend, Team Liquid and Gambit Esports in the new VCT EMEA league. While the Guild and BIG qualified in the European open qualifiers, SuperMassive competed in the Turkish classification.
The Guild and BIG came through the open system and knocked out the teams that were invited to the closed qualifiers to make the new EMEA league. The Guild beat TENSTAR and Team Vitality to enter the rankings. BIG went through the lower group, beating TENSTAR and Alliance before taking their qualifiers 3-0 over Vitality, which sent them into the lower division in the second round.
Other teams joining the European teams in the VCT EMEA Challengers 1 qualification are SuperMassive Blaze and FPX. SuperMassive came from the open group and largely experienced the closed qualifier competition. After losing just one map in the grand final of Fire Flux Esports, only one Turkish team was able to advance to the new league and SMB qualified.
FPX took a very different path when they started the closed elimination race by losing to KPI Gaming in the first round. They then competed in the lower group to face Natus Vincere in the grand finals and qualified by winning the series 3-2.
The next qualifying roster for the three regions starts again on Monday with the open qualifiers. Four teams from each region will make the next closed qualifiers in the open division and compete for the 1-man place in VCT EMEA Challengers 4.
Closed qualifiers for the three regions begin on Thursday.
