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Tarik playing with Evil Geniuses CS:GO roster in 2019, on stage at an ESL event.
Photo via ESL
Category:
Counter-Strike

DreamHack to host NA CS2 LAN that will serve as Pro League qualifier for first time in years

We're so back.
Image of Scott Robertson
Scott Robertson
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Published: Oct 5, 2023 10:50 am

The full transition from CS:GO to Counter-Strike 2 is getting closer and closer to completion, and soon, every tournament will be played on CS2. While the upcoming ESL Challenger Atlanta tournament to be held at DreamHack Atlanta won’t be the only CS2 LAN in North America, it will be the first in years to carry a major implication.

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The winner of ESL Challenger Atlanta, an eight-team tournament to be held from Dec. 15 to 17, will qualify directly for ESL Pro League season 19, which begins in April 2024. The last time an offline tournament held in North America determined who qualified for the ESL Pro League was way back in 2019: before the pandemic, before VALORANT, and back when the NA Pro League was still alive and well.

ESL Pro League season 10 was the last season that featured smaller regional leagues that fed into a global LAN final. While seasons 11 and 12 were postponed due to COVID, season 13 was the first instance of a single global league, populated primarily by the “permanent partner teams.” But back in 2019, it was the NA Pro League, played offline at the Intel Esports Arena in Burbank, California, that determined who went to the season 10 finals in Odense, Denmark.

It’s almost staggering to think about what NA Counter-Strike looked like back then before the combination of COVID and the launch of VALORANT wreaked havoc on the scene. Many players who went on to be stars or champions in VALORANT were playing in the NA Pro League in 2019. TenZ and mixwell were on Cloud9, Zellsis and yay played for Swole Patrol, and both tarik and Ethan played for Evil Geniuses, with Ethan eventually finding his way back to EG in 2023 to win a world championship in VALORANT.

Many former NA CS players have spoken about how the demise of the NA Pro League was almost the final nail in the coffin for the scene and was the reason many left for the “greener pastures” of VALORANT. Will the return of NA LAN qualifiers, the launch of CS2, and the eventual dismantling of franchised leagues spark a resurgence in the once-contending region? We’ll have to wait and see.

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Author
Image of Scott Robertson
Scott Robertson
VALORANT lead staff writer, also covering CS:GO, FPS games, other titles, and the wider esports industry. Watching and writing esports since 2014. Previously wrote for Dexerto, Upcomer, Splyce, and somehow MySpace. Jack of all games, master of none.
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