ESL One Cologne is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) tournament run by the Electronic Sports League (ESL). To date there has been six ESL One Cologne tournaments, with the first making its appearance in 2014 at the Gamescom event. The majority of professional CSGO events are LAN based events. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, the majority of these LAN events made the transition to become online tournaments, including ESL One Cologne.
Since the inception of the ESL Cologne tournament, two additional regions (Oceania and Asia) were added to the mix, to accommodate teams from around the world. The two most prominent regions, North America (NA) and Europe (EU), have dominated the ESL Cologne event over the years. With the online format for the 2020 tournament, each region was divided into two groups, with four teams per group.
Each region is in contention for its own prize pool. If we bring the NA region into context, teams such as Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9 and FURIA are the main contenders to advance to the NA regional finals for ESL Cologne. With that said, fans should also keep an eye on teams such as Gen.G, 100 Thieves and Chaos as they are also more than capable of dethroning any of the top NA teams.
The total prize pool for the NA region tops out at $135 000, with the finalists each walking away with $65 000 for 1st place and $30 000 for 2nd place. The ESL Cologne NA regional tournament is set to take place from August 18 – August 29 2020. Group stage matches are scheduled to run from 18 – 25 August, with the semi-finals are set to take place on Friday, 28 August and Saturday, 29 August at 22:00 (local South African time). Fans can follow all the action live at ESL’s official Twitch and YouTube channels