The biggest CS:GO event in the world will take place in Stockholm, offering an unprecedented $2 000 000 in prize money featuring the best Counter-Strike teams in the world.

PGL Major Stockholm 2021 rumors

Though the tournament is still quite far away, there are many interesting storylines to consider. They can also play a factor in esports betting, like we’ve found when savvy readers could figure out in advance that SK Gaming will not be at their world-beating best in Atlanta because they couldn’t field their usual fifth player at the big event. Astralis, the winners of the last three Majors in a row, generally considered to be the best team ever to play Counter-Strike, have lost their talismanic AWPer device to Ninjas in Pyjamas, so whether they will be able to bounce back and remain competitive will be one of the most important stories to follow. Rumor has it that there’s a lot of internal strife going on inside that team.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on Team Liquid as North American CS’ last great hope. With so many teams and players ditching Counter-Strike for Valorant, one has to wonder what the effects of another poor showing from NA’s finest would have on the remainder of the scene, especially considering the impact on a legendary player like FalleN.

PGL Major Stockholm 2021 schedule

After a year of pandemic-enforced absence, the Major circuit returns under the auspices of PGL in October 2021. Just like previous Majors, this one will also feature 24 teams in the main event – eight Champions, eight Legends and eight Challengers – but the usual direct invites from the previous Major have been scrapped on account of just how long it has been since the previous competition (which took place in September 2019 in Berlin).

The tournament will begin on October 23, 2021 and the grand final is set to take place on November 7. The specific schedule of the various stages of the tournament has not been announced yet but we can still make some educated guesses based on the previous Majors that used a similar format.

The New Challengers Stage featured a 16-team Swiss format and lasted for four days, so we can predict that the corresponding stage for the PGL Stockholm Major will likely take place between October 23 and October 26. A one-day break followed, then came the New Legends Stage featuring those who qualified from the previous segment of the tournament plus the eight best teams from the previous Major – by the same scheduling, the Stockholm event would have this stage between October 28 and November 1.

A longer, three-day break followed after this point, setting the stage for the playoffs and the exciting conclusion of the tournament: the quarterfinals on day one, the semifinals on day two and the grand final on day three of The New Champions Stage. It seems like the PGL Stockholm Major will feature the same setup, with the round of eight taking place on November 5, the semis on November 6 and the grand final on November 7, which fits perfectly with the previously announced overall schedule.

PGL Major Stockholm 2021 qualifiers

The canceled Rio Major was going to be the first one featuring a set of big qualifier events selected from the circuit, similarly to how the Dota Pro Circuit used to operate in the past. These plans were scuttled because of the pandemic and a different set of tournaments were introduced, which are known as the Regional Major Ranking events. Since top-tier competition still takes place online, each region has a separate set of events this time to compete for a pre-determined number of spots at the Major to avoid any major latency issues.

This is how the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 slots are allocated for the various regions (with different names as there are no Champions this time around):

PGL Major Stockholm 2021 Legends qualifiers

· 3 European teams
· 3 North American teams
· 2 CIS teams

PGL Major Stockholm 2021 Challengers qualifiers

· 6 European teams
· 1 North American team
· 1 CIS team

PGL Major Stockholm 2021 Contenders qualifiers

· 2 European teams
· 1 North American team
· 2 CIS teams
· 1 South American team
· 1 Asian team
· 1 Oceanic team

This means that in total eleven European teams will participate at the Major alongside five North American and five CIS sides, joined by one from South America, Asia and Oceania respectively. The first RMR events are taking place in May and the rest haven’t been announced yet at the time of writing.