The 2018 ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier begins this weekend, meaning that Counter-Strike is coming back to North America.
With eight teams fighting in this year’s event, which boasts a $1 million prize pool, Atlanta, Georgia will be home to a week of fun CS:GO action. The biggest difference in this year’s event is that the group stage isn’t spread out over four weeks and there aren’t 16 teams in attendance like last year.
Related: FaZe Clan defeat Astralis to win the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier
The group stage will be held from July 21 to 25, while the playoff stage will take place from July 28 to 29. In the first four days, the event will follow a standard GSL-style format, where it’s double elimination in groups of four teams. Once four teams emerge from the opening stage, they’ll go on to the single-elimination playoffs during the weekend.
Below is the schedule for the initial matches, winners’ matches, elimination matches, and decider matches for each group. The playoff schedule is also shown. All of the games are decided in a best-of-three map format.
Group A
- Astralis vs. Cloud9 (July 21, 1pm CT)
- Team Liquid vs. MIBR (July 21, 4pm CT)
- Winners’ Match (July 23, 1pm CT)
- Elimination Match (July 24, 1pm CT)
- Decider Match (July 25, 1pm CT)
Group B
- Natus Vincere vs. Fnatic (July 22, 1pm CT)
- FaZe Clan vs. Mousesports (July 22, 4pm CT)
- Winners’ Match (July 23, 4pm CT)
- Elimination Match (July 24, 4pm CT)
- Decider Match (July 25, 4pm CT)
Playoffs
- Semifinal One (July 28, 1pm CT)
- Semifinal Two (July 28, 4pm CT)
- Grand Final (July 29, 1pm CT)
Astralis, FaZe, and Na’Vi are the favorites to win the Premier this time around, but it’s possible that Mouz, Fnatic, Liquid, and MIBR could make some noise, especially considering some of the team changes that went down. As for Cloud9, it’ll be interesting to see if they pull off a good result in the competition pool, since they strung together a last-minute team earlier this week. The recently crowned ESL One Cologne champion Na’Vi could potentially win their second consecutive tournament if they defeat Astralis and FaZe with the same finesse that they showed in Germany earlier this month.
Action at the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier can be watched on ELEAGUE’s Twitch channel or on ELEAGUE’s Live Game Command, which allows users to customize their spectating experience.
