ESL has published the composition of the teams that will take part in IEM Cologne and their distribution in the tournament bracket. Sixteen teams will compete for a place in the finals from the play-in stage, where they were selected based on their results in qualifying matches and performance in the ESL Pro Tour, as well as their position in the ESL rankings. Eight of them will advance to the next stage.
The most notable matches on the opening day of the tournament promise to be the confrontation between FaZe and Evil Geniuses, as well as the competition between two German teams – Sprout and BIG. It is worth paying attention to the only Russian team performing in this stage: Spirit will fight for the right to get into the next stage with the Brazilian MIBR:
Eight more teams will begin their performance at IEM Cologne immediately from the main stage – these are those who took leading positions at the end of the ESL Pro Tour. Group A included Gambit, who now top the world rankings, as well as G2, Virtus.pro and Liquid. The composition of Group B also looks very impressive: it included Natus Vincere and Astralis, as well as Heroic and FURIA.
There are less than two weeks left before the start of the competition. IEM Cologne will be the first competition since the start of the pandemic to be held in the usual LAN format.
