ESL has revealed the first details of its CS2 Pro Tour throughout 2025, detailing a circuit with a financial contribution of over $22m over the next couple of years. With the CS2 pro scene becoming more of an open circuit from 2025 as per Valve’s rules, tournament organizers must up their game going forward to ensure all of the biggest teams choose their events to attend, especially with the likes of PGL and StarLadder returning throughout the year.
Credit: ESL
ESL Pro Tour 2025 revealed
In a post on its website, ESL revealed its plans for the already-stacked 2025 circuit. It came with very few surprises; the two ESL Pro Tour Championships, IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne, will of course be making a return. Despite recent rumors to the contrary, ESL Pro League will also be back for Season 21 and 22 as will the Intel Grand Slam.
See below for the full ESL CS2 2025 calendar:
IEM Katowice 2025: January 29th – February 9th
ESL Pro League Season 21 (Location TBD): February 25th – March 16th
IEM Spring 2025 (Location TBD): April 21st – 27th
IEM Dallas 2025: May 19th – 25th
IEM Cologne 2025: July 23rd – August 3rd
ESL Pro League Season 22 (Location TBD): September 23rd – October 12th
IEM Chengdu 2025: November 3rd – 9th
Credit: ESL
With the exception of IEM Dallas 2025, all of the IEM events will exclusively use Global Valve Rankings to determine invites. IEM Dallas will instead use 50% Valve Rankings invites, and 50% online qualifiers worldwide. Other notable details include the removal of best-of-ones entirely, as well as all Grand Finals being best-of-five going forward.
Also of note is the absence of an ESL Major. December’s 2025 CS2 Major has yet to be announced, so it could technically happen, although it looks unlikely at this point. If this happens, this would mean that we’re going on four years without an ESL Major by the time 2026 rolls around (IEM Rio Major 2022).
ESL has also yet to announce details of how the prize pools for the event will be distributed across the 2025 Pro Tour, with more details to come.
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