Day 1 Challenger Stage match-ups determined

PGL will host CSGO’s first pandemic-hit major in Sweden after a span of two years. After a long stint of trial and tribulation, the event organizers were finally able to organize the much-anticipated Counter Strike Major in the capital of Sweden.  The $2,000,000 tournament will be played from October 26 onwards till November 7 and will feature the top 24 teams who made it from the regional RMR (Regional Major Ranking) events.

According to the schedule, every stage of the major will be played over the course of four days each, Challengers, Legends, and the Champions. Ticket sales for the event opened at the end of September.

Today on Twitter, PGL revealed the first round match-ups for the Challengers and the contenders stage. A total of 16 teams from the above two stages will battle out in a swiss round format with the initial fixtures to be all Best of 1s while the qualification/elimination matches would be determined on the basis of that of a  Best of 3 series.

The matches will be broadcast across a total of two streams, the first to be the main and the other to be the secondary one. October 26th, the opening day would feature an all Danish derby fixture between Astralis and Copenhagen Flames while FaZe Clan would lock horns with the CIS giants Team Spirit on the secondary stream followed by paiN Gaming go against Entropiq.

As said, top 8 teams would progress and join Ninjas in Pyjamas, Tea Vitality, G2 Esports, FURIA Esports, Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, Natus Vincere and Gambit Esports in the Legends stage where they would need to undergo yet another swiss stage to further determine their fate towards the playoffs.

Here is the list of the first day match-ups as revealed by PGL :

For the first time in a span of two years ever since the global coronavirus pandemic doomed over, the PGL Major would feature a LAN event and would be held in front of a live crowd at the Avicii Arena in Stockholm, Sweden.