Journey to the PGL Major: The Minors
With the online part behind us, we're heading into a pivotal stage of the qualifying process ahead of the PGL Major: the Minors. Here is a quick rundown of the four events taking place during the first three weeks of June, which will hand out a total of nine spots for the Major's offline qualifier.
At the end of April and throughout the first three weeks of May, we saw the online qualifiers for the respective Minors take place in Asia, Europe, the Americas, and CIS.
With all the teams locked in for each of the four Minors, and the Asia Minor starting in less than a week, we have decided to put together a quick rundown of the next qualifying stage ahead of the PGL Major.
Asia Minor (June 1-4) - two spots
The online part prior to the Asia Minor consisted of five regional qualifiers, which handed out a total of six spots, with Renegades and TYLOO filling the remaining two via direct invites.
One of the most exciting prospects of the Minor is that former TyLoo trio YuLun "Summer" Cai, YuanZhang "Attacker" Sheng, and QiFang "Karsa" Su will make their offline debut with their new lineup, Flash, in an attempt to snatch one of the main qualifier spots for themselves.
Group A | Group B |
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As you may have noticed, the groups for the Asia Minor have already been revealed along with the full schedule.
The Beijing event will begin with a GSL group stage, followed by a double-elimination, best-of-three playoffs, with the grand finalists grabbing the two main qualifier spots on offer.
CIS Minor (June 8-11) - two spots
The CIS Minor's qualifiers followed a different format, which saw four teams proceed through the open stage, joining 12 invited sides in the closed part, in which the 16 teams were split into four groups.
By placing top two in their respective groups, the following eight squads have made their way to the Minor, which will run from June 8-11 in Moscow, Russia:
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Groups and schedule for the CIS Minor are yet to be revealed by PGL, but we know that the format will be the exact same across all Minors: GSL group stage and double-elimination, best-of-three playoffs.
Americas Minor (June 8-11) - two spots
In the Americas, Immortals and Cloud9 received direct invites, while paiN secured a spot at the Minor via an open qualifier in South America.
The North American side of things featured a two-stage process, with the 16-team closed part using an adjusted Swiss format to determine the remaining five spots on the following list:
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It's worth noting that Misfits will attend the Americas Minor without their in-game leader, Sean "seang@res" Gares, who had to leave his place to Skyler "Relyks" Weaver due to the 28-year-old's wedding taking place during the tournament.
The Esports Arena, in Santa Ana, California, will host the $50,000 event, which will run side-by-side with the CIS Minor, from June 8-11.
Europe Minor (June 15-18) - three spots
PGL organized four open qualifiers in Europe, each of which handed out two spots in the closed stage, featuring a classical Swiss format, with three wins awarding a spot at the Minor and three losses resulting in elimination.
While qualifiers for the other three Minors went largely as expected, Europe saw two of the favored teams left without a chance to make it to the Major. NIP were eliminated early after three stunning defeats at the hands of iGame.com, Red Reserve, and Space Soldiers, while Heroic fell to fnatic Academy in the last round.
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Due to Envy being ineligible to keep the former squad's spot in the offline qualifier (with only two members of the previous roster remaining), the Europe Minor will have three spots at the offline qualifier on offer.
The venue for the last Minor, running from June 15-18, is yet to be announced by PGL. However, their studios in Bucharest are a strong possibility as the Romanian organizers held two Minor Championships there last year.
These are the teams that have already secured their place at the offline qualifier (June 29-July 2) by placing in the bottom eight at the ELEAGUE Major:
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And the following eight are locked in for the PGL Major after finishing top eight at the ELEAGUE Major:
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For more information on each of the four Minors, you can head over to the "Upcoming events" section on our event page.