ESL abandon National Championships
With the launch of CS2, ESL will move away from its national championship tournaments.
The news was shared today in a post on Twitter.
ESL's National Championship has been taking place for over 20 years, but will now be shut down for the 2024 season.
- For years we have been cultivating two parallel ecosystems for CS: the nation-based one similar to traditional sports leagues and the borderless system based on pan-regional online tournaments. It ultimately took a toll on our ability to focus and created a number of compatibility issues across different ESL Pro Tour properties.Over time, it became increasingly apparent that the borderless system is a much more dynamic and flexible foundation for the EPT and a better pathway for aspiring teams and players to climb up the ladder. Therefore with the launch of Counter-Strike 2, we will be closing our ESL National Championship program. Benelux, France, Spain, and Turkey will not operate their final season this year, while Australia & New Zealand, Brazil, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom & Ireland will play a final season in 2023 before stopping in 2024, ESL explains on their website.
ESL also confirmed that both German and Polish teams will still have the opportunity to qualify for their two flagship events, IEM Cologne and IEM Katowice. This year we saw BIG Academy qualify for IEM Cologne by winning the ESL Meisterschaft Spring Finals 2023.