ESL Pro League S18 preview

ESL Pro League S18 is scheduled to take place between August 30 – October 1. The tournament features 32 teams and will be played offline, in Malta. For those who enjoy watching top-quality Counter-Strike, the month of September will be full of great matches.

EPL S18 is an S-tier tournament that brings together the best teams in the world. Its prize pool is $850.000, which makes it extremely important for a lot of the competitors, especially the ones that aren’t in the top 10.

In addition to money, the winner will also get a direct invitation to IEM Katowice 2024 and BLAST World Final 2023.

Updates on #ESLProLeague Season 18: New dates – August 30th-October 1st! 📅

Don’t forget to learn about the new slot distribution for Season 18👇https://t.co/EGoRbC22LZ pic.twitter.com/Mc9AbXrO5L

— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) March 27, 2023

Competitive format

ESL Pro League Season 18 uses a very unusual format called triple-elimination. Every match is best-of-three and the teams get eliminated only after three losses. There are four groups in total and each of them has eight participants. Of these eight teams four of them qualify for the playoffs.

Each group winner advances directly to the quarterfinals or the round of 8. The runner-up advances to the round of 12. The 3^rd and 4^th place teams advance to the round of 16. Like other CS:GO events, EPL S18 will use a single-elimination format for the playoffs.

Participants

This tournament features a lot of teams for an S-tier CS:GO competition. Here are all of the participants for each group.

Group A

• Team Vitality
• ORKS
• Astralis
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• FURIA Esports
• Movistar Riders
• Grayhound
• GamerLegion

Group B

• Heroic
• Rooster
• BIG
• Monte
• MOUZ
• MIBR
• Evil Geniuses
• ENCE

Group C

• FaZe Clan
• 9z Team
• Imperial Esports
• Fnatic
• Apeks
• M80
• 5yclone
• Natus Vincere

Group D

• Cloud9
• Eternal Fire
• Complexity
• 9INE
• Team Liquid
• Virtus.pro
• Lynn Vision
• G2 Esports

In every single group, there are at least two or three strong teams and a lot of other interesting teams that have the potential to cause serious upsets. This combination is guaranteed to make the event exciting to watch.

One positive aspect of the tournament’s long duration is that the group stage matches will be played sequentially. This means that if you’re interested in everything that’s going on, you’ll be able to watch most of the action from start to finish.

The only limitation is that some of the matches from the same group will be played in parallel. However, there will never be more than two matches running at the same time.

Header: ESL