Tournament organizer ESL has announced that the qualification format for two key events of the year will change from 2023. Before that, the system functioned as follows: based on the results of other ESL events during the year, 16 out of 24 teams were determined to qualify for the play-in and main stage of the main tournaments. The rest were selected based on the ESL World Ranking and the ESL National Championships in Poland or Germany.
Starting from IEM Katowice 2023, the organizer will no longer use ESL Pro Tour ranking and all invites will be allocated based on ESL World Ranking. Some slots will be given out based on the results of other key ESL events, in particular the Pro League season, the previous major and up to three «»partner events that the organizers choose.
ESL explains that the purpose of these changes – is to simplify the selection procedure in the tournament cycle, as the organizers felt that using two rating systems simultaneously made it too complicated for players. In the situation where one team wins multiple qualifiers, the remaining unoccupied slots will be distributed based on ESL World Ranking. If the partner competitions are not selected, this ranking will be used to allocate the slots assigned to them.