ESL Pro League Season 24 Will Bring 16 Counter-Strike 2 Teams to Katowice

The October 3-11, 2026 LAN event will use a 16-team Swiss stage before an eight-team playoff at Spodek Arena, with 12 VRS invitations, four regional qualifiers, and a $1 million prize pool.

Angel Kicevski August 10, 2026

286 2 minutes read

ESL Pro League Season 24 will bring 16 Counter-Strike 2 teams to Katowice, Poland, from October 3-11, 2026. Twelve teams received direct invitations, while four regional qualifiers completed the field.

Every squad invited through the Valve Regional Standings accepted its place. The current top five in the standings, Spirit, Falcons, 9z, MOUZ, and Vitality, will all compete in Katowice.

The direct-invite group will also feature NAVI, Legacy, BetBoom, and Parivision alongside G2, FURIA, and a new-look Aurora lineup. Regional qualifiers TYLOO, M80, 1win, and ShindeN earned their spots by winning their region’s ESL Challenger League Finals.

A smaller 16-team field allows the entire competition to take place on LAN, not just the Spodek Arena finale. Group-stage matches will use a studio setting in Katowice before the final bracket moves to the arena.

Season 24 will begin with a Swiss stage

The published schedule and tournament details place the group stage from October 3-7, followed by an eight-team playoff from October 9-11 at Katowice’s Spodek Arena.

Group stage: October 3-7
Playoffs: October 9-11
Playoff venue: Spodek Arena

The opening phase will use a 16-team Swiss format. Teams need three series wins to reach the playoffs, while three series losses will eliminate them. Every Swiss-stage match will be best-of-three, giving teams room to recover from one bad map while making repeated mistakes increasingly difficult to survive.

Eight teams will advance to a single-elimination playoff bracket. Playoff matches will be best-of-three except for the best-of-five grand final, and a third-place decider will be played before the championship match.

The invitations were based on the August 3 Valve Regional Standings snapshot, and ESL has scheduled group seeding for September 21, 2026, in its official announcement. With VRS leaders, established contenders, and four regional qualifiers sharing the same bracket, Season 24 will offer several different paths into the playoffs.

ESL Pro League Season 24 prize pool

Season 24 will offer a $1,000,000 prize pool. Organizations will receive $700,000 through the Club Share portion, while players will compete for the remaining $300,000.

The tournament winner will earn $295,000 in total, including $170,000 through Club Share.

Where to watch the Katowice event

ESL will stream the tournament through its official Counter-Strike channels on Kick, YouTube, and Twitch. Group-stage matches will also use a Twitch B stream, giving viewers a second broadcast for games running at the same time.

Which team do you expect to handle the Swiss stage best in Katowice?

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Counter-Strike 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer tactical first-person shooter developed and published by Valve. Released in September 2023, it is the fifth main entry in the Counter-Strike series and serves as a direct replacement for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Steam. Two teams, Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists, compete in objective-based rounds across modes such as bomb defusal and hostage rescue. Built on the Source 2 engine, the game introduced volumetric smoke physics, revised weapon handling, and a new sub-tick server architecture. It inherited all cosmetic items from its predecessor and features both a map-specific Competitive mode and a numerically ranked Premier mode.