Through their official website, ESL has announced that they’re looking to bring the ESL Pro League back during this fall. The tournament will feature 24 best teams in the world who’ll fight for the throne through four weeks before the grand finals. The tournament is scheduled to start from September 2nd and will consist of the best teams across Europe, North America, South American, Asia and Oceania.
The qualifiers for Europe, Asia and Oceania will be played as BO3 double-elimination brackets, while the grand finals will be a BO5. Due to the South American qualifiers only consisting of two teams, it will only feature BO5 series. The North American qualifier will see three teams battling it out in a round-robin format.
The participating teams for season 12 will contain 13 partner teams who jointly govern and participate in revenue for ESL Pro League, 3 teams which were participants in season 11 but failed to join due to travel restrictions and 6 slots are reserved for teams advancing through the special qualifier. The remaining slots will be filled by the best teams from Mountain Dew League.
ESL have made it clear that if the COVID-19 situation improves within the given time frame and the travel restrictions are contracted, they’ll organized LAN tournaments as announced in the following format:
However, if the situation gets worse and travelling becomes a cause of concern, ESL mentions that they’ll shift the tournament which will then be held online, “Should travels not be possible, we will take ESL Pro League online again and divide it into regional online leagues covering all five regions: Europe, North America, Asia, Oceania, and South America. More details on that will follow soon.”
The participating teams for ESL Pro League Season 12 will include:
Partner teams
- 100Thieves
- Astralis
- Faze
- Complexity
- Ence
- Evil Geniuses
- G2
- Fnatic
- Mousesports
- Team Liquid
- Team Vitality
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
Invites
Special Qualifier
- 2x EU Teams
- 1x NA Team
- 1x SA Team
- 1x Asia Team
- 1x Oceania Team
