A viewer’s guide to ESL One Cologne

One of the most iconic tournaments in Counter-Strike starts in a couple days, and teams will be fighting for the most coveted ESL One title in history.

Cologne, Germany will be home to the world’s best CS:GO teams from July 3 to 8, with a total prize pool of $300,000 up for grabs. There will be 16 teams in attendance, and only six will survive the group stage of the event before moving on to the playoffs. Like past ESL One and IEM tournaments, ESL will be using its standardized format for both the group and playoff stages.

Related: SK Gaming sweep Cloud9 to win their second straight ESL Cologne title

From July 3 to 5, two groups of eight teams will be vying for either a one-way ticket to the semifinals or for a spot in the quarterfinals. Initial best-of-one matches will precede best-of-three winners and losers matches, and the games will continue until three playoff contenders emerge victorious from their respective groups. If a team loses twice in the group stage, then they’re eliminated from the tournament.

Here’s the schedule for the opening matches of ESL One Cologne, which will start on July 3.

Group A

• Astralis vs. ENCE Esports (5am CT)
• Ninjas in Pyjamas vs. Cloud9 (5am CT)
• Mousesports vs. Gambit Esports (6:10am CT)
• G2 Esports vs. Natus Vincere (6:10am CT)

Group B

• FaZe Clan vs. BOOT-dS (7:20am CT)
• MIBR (former SK Gaming) vs. Renegades (7:20am CT)
• Fnatic vs. North (8:30am CT)
• BIG vs. Team Liquid (8:30am CT)

The top-seeded teams in each group who place first via the winners bracket will be awarded a spot in the semifinals, while the two lower-seeded teams via the losers bracket will be put in the quarterfinals, which start Friday, July 6 in the LANXESS Arena. The semifinal matches will take place the next day on July 7, and the event will reach its conclusion on Sunday, July 8 in a best-of-five grand final.

Astralis, FaZe, Liquid, and Na’Vi are the key favorites in attendance, since they’ve shown exceptional form in recent months. Many competitors in the team pool recently made roster changes, including C9, G2, Fnatic, MIBR, Mouz, and NiP, and they’ll be going into the tournament as potential playoff hopefuls. The definite underdogs, however, are ENCE, Gambit, Renegades, North, BIG, and BOOT-dS.

To watch ESL One Cologne, tune into ESL’s Facebook stream or check out other Twitch streams, which are usually hosted in other languages like Russian, French, and Spanish.