ESL One Cologne 2016 is the next CS:GO Major

Valve Corporation has announced its next $1 million major - ESL One Cologne, to be held at the Lanxess arena in July. It will be the fifth major hosted by ESL out of a total of nine.

The tournament will kick off on July 5 and run for five days, ending on the 10th. It will feature the top 8 teams from MLG Columbus 2016, who will compete against 8 teams decided by an offline qualifier. The qualifier will include the eight teams eliminated in the group stage of MLG Columbus 2016, as well as eight teams identified through regional minor championships.

Don’t miss your chance to bet on Europe’s biggest and most prestigious CS:GO event, bets on ESL One Cologne 2016 will be available on gg.bet at all stages of the tournament.

Teams that will receive direct invites to ESL One Cologne:

• Luminosity Gaming
• Natus Vincere
• Astralis
• Team Liquid
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• Fnatic
• Counter Logic Gaming
• Virtus.Pro

It’s worth to be cautious with your bets, as several top contenders for the championship title are facing some last minute roster drama. Fnatic’s CS:GO squad has to decide whether to join ESL Cologne 2016 without one of their best players Olof "Olofmeister" Kajbjer, who suffered a wrist injury in April and missed DreamHack Masters Malmö. You can find more info on Fnatic’s website - http://fnatic.com/content/96648. At the same time, according to Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko’s twitter, Denis "seized" Kostin of Na'Vi is facing some issues opening his German visa and his participation in the tournament is still in question. Incidentally, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev has recently left Team Liquid, looking to join a European team. At some point he was rumored as a possible replacement for seized, but s1mple is still under contract with TL and might play for them in the upcoming major.

For ticketing information you can visit - esl one. And for those at home ESL One Cologne will provide live in-game streaming through GOTV, as well as official Twitch streams.