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

The event will run from October 3-11, 2026, with 12 VRS invitations, four regional qualifiers, and an eight-team playoff at Spodek Arena.

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

ESL has announced the field for ESL Pro League Season 24, which will bring 16 Counter-Strike 2 teams to Katowice, Poland, from October 3-11, 2026.

Twelve teams received direct invitations, and every squad invited through the VRS 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. Those teams will be joined by four regional qualifiers: TYLOO, M80, 1win, and ShindeN. Each earned its spot by winning its region’s ESL Challenger League Finals.

The smaller 16-team field also allows the entire competition to take place on LAN, not just the Spodek Arena finale.

Season 24 will begin with a Swiss stage

The tournament will open with a Swiss group stage before the field is reduced to eight teams for the playoffs. The final bracket will be played at Katowice’s Spodek Arena from October 9-11, giving the event a three-day live finale.

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 the VRS leaders, several established contenders, and four regional qualifiers all sharing the same bracket, the Season 24 field will include plenty of different paths into the playoffs. ESL has not provided the full match schedule in the announcement.

Share your thoughts on the Season 24 field in the comments, and follow along on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.

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.