ESL has also announced their 2026 Winter Championship in Poland, which will feature a $1.25 million prize pool, with 24 of the top teams from the Valve Ranking System (VRS) competing on LAN. Notably, ESL has not named this tournament IEM Katowice, a departure from tradition. ESL’s Director of Game Ecosystems for Counter-Strike, Marc Winther, explained that “we usually only announce the exact city and venue until closer to the event, however in order to be compliant with the new requirements as set out by Valve, we’re releasing the country now which should be seen as the minimum requirement”.
For 2027, ESL plans to maintain its familiar schedule with seven major events. Meanwhile BLAST will host six tournaments in 2027, including Bounty and Open events. The first Bounty tournament is scheduled for January 12-24, overlapping with a PGL event (January 13-25), marking a rare schedule conflict for teams and fans.
Valve’s new guidelines, which require tournament organizers to announce their schedule 24 months in advance, have made scheduling more transparent but also more challenging. The increased number of tournaments has led to overlapping events. This marks a shift from previous years when organizers often coordinated to avoid such conflicts.
With other major players like StarLadder and PGL expanding their presence in the scene, scheduling clashes may become more common as the Counter-Strike ecosystem continues to grow.
The tournament schedule for 2027 is currently outlined as follows:
January
February - March
March - May
August - October
October - December
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