EPICENTER 2017: general information and invited teams

EPICENTER is back, this time to the northern capital of Russia, St. Petersburg with a whopping $500,000 prize pool. Read about the general information already known about the tournament and the teams who got invited to one of the biggest events in the professional CS:GO scene.

EPICENTER 2017 is going to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, with playoffs being played at the Yubileyny Sports Palace with 7,000 seats on October 28–29. This is the second event of the EPICENTER series, the first one took place in Moscow a year ago, and was well received both by viewers and by players due to high-quality production and great organization.

This year the teams are going to fight for their share of a $500,000 prize pool, which is twice as much as prize pools of other major event organizers, such as Dreamhack or ESL.

8 best teams from all over the world, 6 invites and 2 spots for qualifiers

Everyone gets a chance to participate in the tournament, as there is an advanced qualification system featuring both open and closed regional qualifiers as well as the Wild Card round to determine two last teams to take part in the LAN-event. First, there is going to be two-staged open qualifiers between September 2 and 10 in four regions: the Americas, Europe, CIS, China. The open qualifiers are followed by closed qualifiers, which will be held from September 11 to October 1. Later, the winners of the closed regional qualifiers will compete in the Wild Card round on October 23 for two spots in the group stage of EPICENTER 2017.

The following 6 teams received direct invites to the LAN-event:

• SK Gaming
• Astralis
• Gambit
• Virtus.pro
• North
• G2 Esports
• TBD (Wild Card Winner #1)
• TBD (Wild Card Winner #2)