ESL have announced their CS:GO Pro Tour for 2022

Major esports tournament organiser, ESL, have announced their plans for the 2022 ESL Pro Tour. These are some of the biggest and most important CS:GO events that are held every year.

The Pro Tour

ESL have announced their plans for the 2022 Pro Tour. Now that the world is almost on the edge of returning to some sort of normality, ESL are confident in releasing their schedule for next year.

There are over 25 different competitions spread across the year. Here is the breakdown of the major events:

• Two EPT Championships: IEM Katowice & IEM Cologne
• Five EPT Masters tournaments
• Four ESL Challenger tournaments
• Four ESL Challenger League seasons
• Over ten ESL National Championships

Here are the dates for the biggest tournaments in the Pro Tour:

• ESL Pro League Season 15: November 23rd to the 28th, 2021 and March 9th to April 10th, 2022
• IEM US: May 31st to June 5th, 2022
• ESL Pro League Season 16: June 14th to the 19th and August 31st to October 2nd, 2022
• IEM Cologne: July 5th to the 17th, 2022
• ESL Pro League Season 17: November 22nd to the 27th, 2022
• IEM China: December 6th to the 11th, 2022

The events

Their plan for all of these events is to keep the gameplay offline. They want to avoid hosting events online and keep them LAN only. Not only will they have all of the teams in one place to make broadcasting a lot easier, but they will also be able to make sure that no team has an advantage over the other when it comes to internet strength or lag.

They also announced that they are planning to bring back live audiences to the events. Now, that will not apply to all of these events as they will have to contend with local regulations and crowd sizes but there may be more live events from ESL next year. The biggest news when it comes to live audiences is that they are planning to have them at all Masters & Championship events. That means the big tournaments like IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne will offer tickets for fans. While the Covid-19 pandemic is still an ongoing issue, hopefully the world will have gotten it under control by 2022. Although, everyone should still keep their expectations in check, there is always a chance that these events may be cancelled. All you need to do is look back at the long list of events in 2021 that were relocated, cancelled, or rescheduled.

The rest of 2021

While we do have some great news for the 2022 season, there are still some big events left to watch in 2021:

• IEM Fall: September 28th to October 10th
• Dreamhack Open 47: November 10th to the 14th
• The EPL Season 15 Conference: November 23rd to the 28th
• IEM Winter: December 2nd to the 12th

Unfortunately, most of these events will not have a live audience, we will have to wait until 2022 for that to return. However, there are still some great games coming in the rest of the year. All of these events bar the Dreamhack Open will affect the standings heading to IEM Katowice in February of next year. Hopefully we will see the full return of the competitive esports scene with live audiences and offline play in 2022.