ESL Pro League finals will take place on October 26-30 (the first two days of the group stage will be played in the ESL Studios and will be closed to public) in São Paulo, Brazil and will decide who will take the season 4 championship and the lion's share of the US$750,000 prize pool. With a brand new format in play, these finals will be quite different than in previous seasons, delivering even more top notch CS:GO action.
The new format
The new format of the ESL Pro League finals has been decided by the WESA Players Council. The finals will now consist of 12 teams in total: top six from Europe and top six from North America (compared to eight teams in total in previous finals).
"The initial plan for a LAN-final with 8 teams felt out-dated," said Viktor 'vuggo' Jendeby, Players Council Chairman. "The scene is now more competitive than ever, and so it feels natural to extend a tournament of this caliber to enable more teams to attend the finals. We also suggested more guaranteed LAN-matches for the teams attending, and proposed a format with 2 groups of 6 - like it is used at IEM events. ESL listened and we, the WESA Player Council, are very happy with how the new format looks like, and I hope the community will appreciate it as well."
The finals will begin with a group stage, consisting of two groups of six teams. The group stage matches will be best of one round robin. The top three teams from each group will advance to the playoffs which will be played as a single elimination best of three bracket. The teams which finish groups in first place will advance directly to the semifinals with the second and third place finishers advancing to the quarterfinals.
The schedule
All times are in BRST (UTC-2) and are estimates as matches are played back to back.
ESL Studios (closed to public)
Wednesday, 26th of October
- 10:30 to 17:00 - Group A matches #1 to #5
- 17:00 to 21:30 - Group B matches #1 to #4
Thursday, 27th of October
- 10:30 to 15:45 - Group A matches #6 to #9
- 15:45 to 21:30 - Group B matches #5 to #9
Stadium (open to public)
Friday, 28th of October
- 10:30 to 17:00 - Group A matches #10 to #15
- 17:00 to 22:30 - Group B matches #10 to #15
Saturday, 29th of October
- 10:30 to 15:00 - TBA, best of three match
- 15:00 to 18:30 - Quarterfinal one
- 18:30 to 22:00 - Quarterfinal two
Sunday, 30th of october
- 10:30 to 15:00 - Semifinal one
- 15:00 to 18:30 - Semifinal two
- 18:30 to 22:00 - Grand Final
See you there!
Tickets for the ESL Pro League are now available so be sure to join us and watch Europe's and North America's best teams live in action. For all the latest updates, follow ESL CS on Twitter and Facebook.
