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ESL Announces Extreme Masters Will Return To Cologne

Published Sat, 02 Jul 2022 19:12:10 -0500

The ESL announced this week that the CS:GO event Intel Extreme Masters will make its return to Cologne starting on July 5th, 2022. The event will take place at the LANXESS Arena as 24 of the best teams in the world will go head-to-head in a tournament to crown a champion and take home a piece of the $1m prize pool. Starting this Tuesday and running all the way until July 17th, you can watch all of the action on the official ESL Twitch channel. We have more details about how the tournament will run down below.

ESL Announces Extreme Masters Will Return To Cologne — Credit: ESL

The tournament's final stage takes place at the iconic LANXESS arena in Cologne, Germany, where fans can watch the top six teams play live on stage on July 15-17. IEM Cologne 2022 marks the sixth time that ESL Gaming returns to the LANXESS arena. With the two latest editions taking place online and in a studio environment, it is ESL Gaming's first live event of this scale in Germany in almost three years. Among the participating teams are the entirely German squad representing BIG, and renowned German organizations MOUZ and Sprout. They are joined by last year's title holder Natus Vincere, this year's IEM Katowice champions FaZe Clan, the recent IEM Dallas winners Cloud9, and many others.

IEM Cologne 2022 kicks off on Tuesday, July 5, as the 16 Play-In Stage teams enter a double-elimination bracket. From there, the top eight teams join eight already qualified teams in the Group Stage. Then, the teams will be divided into two groups as they make their way through a best-of-three double elimination bracket that will see the three best teams of each group proceed to the Playoffs. Being played in front of a live audience on the stage of the LANXESS arena in Cologne, Germany, and with best-of-three quarter- and semifinals and a best-of-five final, the Playoff Stage will eventually see the best team become this year's IEM Cologne champion.

Apart from being crowned champions of IEM Cologne 2022 and taking home a big chunk of the massive prize pool, the winning team will also earn a title in the race to the Intel Grand Slam IV. With a $1 million cash prize at stake, the first team to win three ESL Pro Tour (EPT) Masters tournaments and one EPT Championship tournament (IEM Katowice, IEM Cologne, or ESL-operated CS:GO Majors) inside a span of ten consecutive events, will mark it's era in CS:GO history.

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