Earlier this year, ESL announced a massive change to their tournament circuit, revealing that IEM Katowice would be moving to Krakow in 2026.
In a recent interview with XYZ.pl, Michal “Carmac” Blicharz, ESL FACEIT Group’s Vice President of Product Development, elaborated on the reasoning behind the relocation.
According to Carmac, ESL has simply outgrown Katowice and the iconic Spodek arena.
– Spodek is too small for us now. The number of people wanting to watch IEM live keeps growing. Tickets sell out faster every year — last time, it was just a dozen or so minutes. That’s why we’re scaling up, Carmac explais.
[post_preview url="https://pley.gg/esl-reveals-new-location-and-rebrand-for-historic-event/"]The ESL executive goes further talking from a business perspective, but where he also assures that they won’t change host city every year.
– The move is necessary from a business point of view, but we cared about staying in the region. Kraków is close to Katowice, where we have a regional EFG office and our own studio. We also received a good offer from the city, and I hope this cooperation will last a long time. We don’t want to change locations every year.
Keeping the same spirit
For over a decade, IEM Katowice has been one of the most prestigious events in Counter-Strike, delivering countless legendary moments on its iconic stage.
And while the location is changing, Carmac made it clear that the spirit of the event will remain intact.
– We would like to preserve the character of our event, to keep certain traditions we’ve built over the years. In Katowice, players walked onto the stage via stairs where the names of all the teams who have won the trophy so far are displayed — we plan to bring that element to Kraków. Same goes for our other rituals and details that fans have gotten used to. The location will be new, but it’s still meant to be the same IEM.
IEM Krakow will kick off in February 2026 and feature a prize pool of $1.25 million. The venue that’s set to host the tournament is Tauron Arena, which is nearly double the size of Spodek in Katowice.
You can read the interview with Carmac here.
Header image credit: Helena Kristiansson, ESL Faceit Group
