The biggest tournament in the CS:GO calendar has been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, ESL announced today.
The only CS:GO Major of 2020, which was set to be held in Brazil, has been called off by ESL following health and safety concerns surrounding the coronavirus. But the event will be replaced by a new “transatlantic tournament” at the end of the year.
ESL is set to host the first offline tournament since the coronavirus outbreak later this year in Cologne, Germany. The IEM Global Challenge will bring teams from both North America and Europe to Cologne as long as the safety concerns are minimal at the time.
The rest of the online events are still on the table, however. IEM New York is set to begin next month with IEM Beijing-Haidian 2020 to follow in November. The year will be concluded by the new IEM Global Challenge 2020, which will replace the Major from Dec. 15 to 20.
Both New York and Beijin-Haidian will offer multiple regional divisions, similar to previous tournaments held online. Both events feature a $250,000 prize pool, while the Global Challenge has a hefty $500,000 grand prize.
This is the first year that CS:GO has been without a Major event since 2013. Since then, CS:GO has had one, two, or three Majors in its yearly cycle, with the prize pool slowly increasing throughout the years.
