ESL has announced that Ancient will appear in the mapp pool at ESL Pro Tour events starting with the summer tournament. This decision was made with input from ESL itself, the player council it formed, and the CSPPA.
Ancient was added to the list of active maps on May 3 as a replacement for Train, and it was the first change in two years. The last time the map pool changed was in 2019, when Vertigo was added instead of Cache. However, at that time Valve did not change the lineup of cards in the current round of ranked tournaments that allowed qualifying for the PGL Stockholm Major. This time the event organizers decided otherwise, and the changes in the mapping pool will almost immediately affect the major events.
The IEM Summer tournament is scheduled to take place in the first half of June, with a prize pool of $250,000. It will host six of the top ten teams in the world rankings, as well as eleven other teams from the top 20. Earlier Wednesday, Valve announced that it is working with BLAST to develop «a unified approach to shaping tournament schedules, tournament rules and fair play policies». It remains to be seen if this means Ancient will also appear at BLAST tournaments, particularly the BLAST Premier Spring Finals.