WCA reveal EU qualifier*

* Update : A number of players, such as Jordan "⁠n0thing⁠" Gilbert and Nicolai "⁠glace⁠" Jensen, have expressed concern about the European qualifiers taking place during the off-season. HLTV.org has reached out to these players for further comment.

The World Cyber Arena announced their $200,000 foray into CS:GO back in March, which laid out three seasons of qualifiers, each one featuring a Chinese component and an international component, with the winners of each season meeting in Yinchuan in December where 1.35 million Yuan (~$200,000) will be on offer.

The first season's international qualifier was devoted to the APAC (Asia-Pacific) region and the offline finals in Beijing saw TYLOO emerge victorious over VG.CyberZen in the China Finals and Australian Immunity and Malaysian MVP.karnal qualify for the World Finals via the APAC Finals. 

With the online portion of China's Season 2 qualifier having already concluded (VG.CyberZen and EHOME have advanced to the offline Finals), the event organisers have announced the European qualifiers to the Season 2 Finals, where two spots to the December World Finals will be on offer.

Unlike the APAC Finals, the winners of the European qualifier will not fly to Beijing, China for their respective Season 2 Finals. The duty of hosting the qualifier has instead been handed to UCC and it will be divided into four stages, which you can find outlined below.

• Open qualification (July 16-20): Hosted by FACEIT.com, 512 teams max proceed through a single elimination, best-of-one bracket. Top four proceed to closed qualification.
• Closed qualification: Single elimination, best-of-three bracket. Top two proceed to Group Stage.
• Group Stage (July 25-August 15): 16 teams (14 invited + 2 from closed qualification). GSL Groups with best-of-three Upper Bracket and best-of-one Lower Bracket. Four groups and two best teams from each group proceed to Final Bracket.
• Final Bracket (August 15-30): Eight teams in double elimination bracket (BO3 UB & BO1 LB). Grand final is best-of-three with one map advantage for Upper Bracket winner. Top two receive fully paid spots to the WCA 2016 World Finals in December.

The prize-pool for the European qualifier is:

1. - RMB 100,000元 (~$15,290) + World Finals spot
2. - RMB 50,000元 (~$7,645) + World Finals spot
3. - RMB 20,000元 (~$3,058)
4-8. - RMB 10,000元 (~$1,529)
4-8. - RMB 10,000元 (~$1,529)
4-8. - RMB 10,000元 (~$1,529)
4-8. - RMB 10,000元 (~$1,529)
4-8. - RMB 10,000元 (~$1,529)

So far the list of spots to the WCA 2016 World Finals is:

TYLOO	CN qual. #2	CN qual. #3	Invite	Immunity
MVP.karnal	EU qual.	EU qual.	NA qual.	NA qual.

To sign-up for the WCA Open Qualifier by UCC, you can do so via the FACEIT portal here.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter