ESL Revealed Details on Their Second Major Dota 2 Tournament

ESL announced that their second major Dota 2 tournament will be held on February 20-25 in Katowice, Poland.

ESL One Katowice will feature 16 teams, 6 of them will have to make it through the regional qualifiers in North America, South America, Europe, CIS, China and Southeast Asia, the other will receive direct invites. The prize pool is set at $1,000,000, which is a standard number for major tournaments in the new competitive season. Besides that, the teams will fight for 1,500 Qualifier Points towards The International 2018. The main event will take place on February 24-25 at Spodek Arena in Katowice, Poland.

The first ESL Dota 2 Major – ESL One Hamburg 2017 – will be held on October 26-29 in Germany. It should be noted that the event is criticized by players and community for a small amount of participating teams and unappropriated conditions for players – for example, Peter “ppd” Dagger said on Twitter that the teams don’t have place to practice before the Major. The ESL staff commented on the situation and explained that the tournament was planned long before Valve’s announcement of new rules for the season, so the situation shouldn’t happen again at the following tournaments. As for now it looks like ESL One Katowice will be much more fitting to a Major status – more teams, more tournament days, which should fuel the competition.