ESL Pro League reveals new format: expands to 32 teams and more

News in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competitive scene! The ESL announces changes to its structure for the upcoming ESL Pro League S17 to be played from January 2023.

The announcement highlights that there will be a more significant number of matches with somewhat modest teams.

ESL Pro League S17 format changes

The ESL has released a statement on its official Twitter account detailing the various changes in the format that will have the ESL Pro League season 17.

As we can see, the number of teams in the group stage expands from 24 to 32 in Season 17. This means that eleven teams will qualify for the ESL Conference League.

Another point to note regarding the ESL Conference League is that the format will change, but it will also cease to exist for Season 18.

Group Stage

The group stage will also change the format, which will be completely different. On the other hand, the qualification for Season 18 and the following ones will have significant changes.

Now, there will finally be 17 teams that will qualify for the ESL Pro League S17 through different ways, joining the 15 teams that have already secured their place, which is part of the Louvre Agreement.

Format

The format of the Group Stage will be completely new. There will be four groups of eight teams each.

The matches will be played in a double-elimination format with one last chance. Finally, the top four teams from each group will advance to the playoffs, where they will play in a single-elimination format.

ESL Pro League S17 Qualifiers

The teams fighting to qualify for the ESL Pro League S17 will battle as follows:

• Three qualifiers from the ESL Challenger
• Three more qualifiers from the ESL World Rankings.
• The last eleven will qualify through the ESL Conference League.

ESL Conference League S17

As mentioned, this will be the last time we see the ESL Conference League as a qualification path to the ESL Pro League. This will be fully regionalized and will be played in an online format in the week of January 16.

The regions will be:

• Europe
• North America
• South America
• Asia
• OCE

There will be two slots from each of these regions, except for Europe, which will have three.

With the extinction of the ESL Conference League in season 17, the way teams will be classified for season 18 will be different:

• 15 Partner Teams
• Three through the ESL World Rankings
• Two ESL Challenger teams
• Four European qualifiers
• Two teams from NA, SA, AS and OCE

The EPL competitions in 2024 are expected to follow a similar allocation and will be announced later in 2023.

Header: ESL