The Main Qualifier will garner seven of ELEAGUE Major's bottom eight teams, with the exception of Envy who lost their spot due to only fielding two out of five players of the old G2 lineup.

Alongside them, nine teams from the Minor system (two from the Americas, CIS, and Asia plus three from Europe) will battle for the all-important eight spots at the PGL Major, set to take place in Krakow from July 16-23.

Here are the 16 teams participating at the Main Qualifier, which will run from June 29 - July 2, distributed into four groups based on their chances to qualify for the 11th Major:

Favorites	Could-be's	Underdogs	Question Mark
G2	BIG	TYLOO	FlipSid3
Cloud9	PENTA	Vega Squadron
Liquid	Renegades	Tengri
OpTic	Dignitas
Immortals	GODSENT
HellRaisers
MOUZ
			click group names to skip ahead

The PGL Major Main Qualifier will feature the Swiss format, meaning that in each round, teams with the same win-loss record will be matched up until they reach three wins (and qualify) or three losses (and get eliminated).

Anything else you might need to know about the final stepping stone ahead of the Major can be found in our viewer's guide. To be as up to date with the tournament as possible, use our event page where you'll be able to find upcoming matches, results, current standings, latest news, the works.

Without further ado, here is our preview of the 16-team showdown:

The Favorites

The first group called The Favorites naturally features lineups with the best chance to advance, thanks to their pedigree within the top tier and recent results. Each of the following seven teams have attended at least one big event in the last three months and competed against the best of the best, with several more showings at the smaller LANs and at least one respectable placing to write home about.

G2 (#4)	Age	Rating 2.0
Kenny "⁠kennyS⁠" Schrub	22	1.19
Alexandre "⁠bodyy⁠" Pianaro	20	1.10
Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon	25	1.09
Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt	23	1.06
Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire	24	1.05
Edouard "⁠SmithZz⁠" Dubourdeaux (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
5th-6th	ECS Season 3 Finals
1st	ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals
1st	DreamHack Open Tours
3rd-4th	DreamHack Open Austin
5th-8th	SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 Finals

The absolute favorite of the Main Qualifier have to be G2, whose ranking recently took an upswing following triumphs at DreamHack Open Tours and ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals.

The Frenchmen's latest showing at ECS Season 3 Finals was far from ideal compared to the aforementioned two tournaments, but it needs to be said that shox's squad had to beat at least one of SK and FaZe (now ranked first and second) in a best of three or both in best-of-one's for a playoffs finish in London.

G2 are the absolute favorite of the Main Qualifier

While G2 can clearly have issues in best-of-one scenarios versus clear underdogs, as we saw in Tours and in Dallas, it would be a massive upset if the French No.1 didn't make it to the Major.

With their first match-up being Immortals, which is arguably first round's best match considering the Brazilians won the previous encounter, G2 will have to be 100% focused from the get-go.

Cloud9 (#6)	Age	Rating 2.0
Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip	19	1.13
Timothy "⁠autimatic⁠" Ta	20	1.09
Tyler "⁠Skadoodle⁠" Latham	23	1.01
Jordan "⁠n0thing⁠" Gilbert	26	0.94
Mike "⁠shroud⁠" Grzesiek	23	0.94
Soham "⁠valens⁠" Chowdhury (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
3rd-4th	ECS Season 3 Finals
7th-8th	DreamHack Open Summer
1st	Americas Minor - PGL Major Krakow
11th-12th	ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals
5th-6th	DreamHack Open Austin
4th	cs_summit

Had the qualifier taken place before ECS Season 3 Finals, Cloud9 may not have been seen as favorites to make it to the Major after their three group stage exits in a row, two of which up against a similar level of competition they'll face in Bucharest.

However, this weekend's ECS Season 3 Finals showed that there is still life in the North American squad, who beat fnatic and Astralis on their way to a semi-final finish.

autimatic has his eyes on his first Major appearance

shroud's resurgence was perhaps one of the biggest takeaways from the London event, as he had been put under scrutiny ever since his retirement remarks, and yet put up solid numbers at ECS, likely his best in 2017.

If we can count on him being able to keep it up over the next few days, Cloud9 should make their first Major appearance with this lineup. autimatic, who also played fantastic Counter-Strike at ECS, will surely find extra motivation to do well again, seeing as the PGL Major would be his first.

Liquid (#9)	Age	Rating 2.0
Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski	19	1.17
Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken	17	1.14
Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella	21	1.01
Josh "⁠jdm64⁠" Marzano	27	0.99
Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz	23	0.96
Wilton "⁠zews⁠" Prado (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
5th-6th	ECS Season 3 Finals
3rd-4th	ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals
7th-8th	DreamHack Open Austin
5th-6th	cs_summit

Another North American team to come out swinging from London are Liquid, who didn't make it past the group stage but earned respect from experts and community alike after beating fnatic and putting up a fight versus Astralis, most notably ending the Danes' winning streak on Overpass, a map stanislaw's team had barely played officially.

The ECS Season 3 Finals showed zews's squad's progress in their map pool, which is still fairly shallow compared to the top-tier, but shouldn't be as noticable with the entire Main Qualifier played in best-of-one's.

Liquid's impressive results in Dallas and in London put them in the Favorites group

On top of that, Liquid seem to be well-rounded on the maps they do play often, being able to switch between passive and aggressive mode when they need to.

Their aggression can be very dangerous against the best, who know how to counter it to perfection with a bit of research, but teams of the second to third tier will have a much harder time coming up with answers, especially with the little time available in between rounds to watch VODs.

OpTic (#11)	Age	Rating 2.0
Oscar "⁠mixwell⁠" Cañellas	21	1.15
Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic	19	1.12
Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik	21	1.02
William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba	23	0.95
James "⁠hazed⁠" Cobb	28	0.80

Offline placings in the past three months
7th-8th	ECS Season 3 Finals
7th-8th	ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals (4/5 of the current lineup)
3rd-4th	IEM Sydney
3rd	cs_summit (4/5 of the current lineup)

Out of the seven Favorites, OpTic's latest results are the least encouraging, with a last place finish at ECS Season 3 Finals (with losses to FaZe and G2, to be fair), and a group stage exit at Pro League Finals when Jason "⁠jasonR⁠" Ruchelski was still part of the team.

Historically, mixwell and company have consistently won match-ups they were favored in, though, of which there are nine at the very least when it comes to the Main Qualifier team list.

OpTic's fate may rely on RUSH recovering from a poor showing at ECS

With a bit of luck and a lack of big upsets, OpTic won't face more than two Favorites in their journey through the Swiss format. That should put them in the 3-2 department, "should" being the dangerous keyword.

Whether the North American team will make it or not may very well come down to RUSH, who had a big dip in form in London but usually is the team's swing vote; when he does well, so do OpTic.

Immortals (#13)	Age	Rating 2.0
Ricardo "⁠boltz⁠" Prass	20	1.18
Vito "⁠kNgV-⁠" Giuseppe	22	1.12
Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles	21	1.11
Lucas "⁠LUCAS1⁠" Teles	21	1.10
Lucas "⁠steel⁠" Lopes	23	1.02
Rafael "⁠zakk⁠" Fernandes (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
3rd-4th	DreamHack Open Summer
2nd	Americas Minor - PGL Major Krakow
9th-10th	ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals
1st	Esports Arena Showdown Championship (4/5 of the current lineup)
2nd	DreamHack Open Austin (4/5 of the current lineup)
9th-11th	SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 Finals (4/5 of the current lineup)

Much like their North American competition in attendance in Romania, Immortals are looking like a solid contender for one of the eight spots at the PGL Major on offer at the Main Qualifier.

kNgV-'s addition has proven quite fruitful so far, as not only his abilities as a secondary AWPer gave the Brazilians the push they needed in some of their successes of late, including the 22-year-old's massive performances against MOUZ and SK at DreamHack Open Summer.

kNg has completely taken over several matches lately

At the same time, Immortals' new playstyle doesn't seem to offer much consistency if we take a deeper look into their results, mainly the 1-16 breakdown on Mirage versus fnatic at that same event and Cloud9's first victory over the Brazilians in the Americas Minor's final.

If steel and company figured out a way to play in a less high-risk-high-reward manner, Immortals' fourth attempt at making it to the Major should be the charm. Even if they didn't, good performances from the hard-hitting trio consisting of boltz, HEN1, and kNgV-, could do the job just as well.

HellRaisers (#14)	Age	Rating 2.0
Kirill "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow	27	1.14
Patrik "⁠Zero⁠" Žúdel	18	1.08
Bence "⁠DeadFox⁠" Böröcz	22	1.03
Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk	21	0.97
Vladyslav "⁠bondik⁠" Nechyporchuk	23	0.96
Ivan "⁠Johnta⁠" Shevtsov (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
3rd-4th	Adrenaline Cyber League
2nd	DreamHack Open Tours
5th-6th	DreamHack Open Austin
3rd-4th	SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 Finals

HellRaisers are going into the Main Qualifier following a tough loss to Virtus.pro at Adrenaline Cyber League, where STYKO and DeadFox carried the team to victory on Cache only to fall short on the next two maps.

Otherwise, ANGE1's roster have had about a month and a half to perfect their play, which is a luxury most Favorites couldn't afford as they went from event to event.

Whether that will be to HellRaisers' advantage is yet to be seen. Last time they had a longer break from offline competition, Zero and company got away with semis at StarSeries, which is a result half the teams at the Main Qualifier could only dream of at the moment. 

MOUZ (#15)	Age	Rating 2.0
Tomáš "⁠oskar⁠" Šťastný	25	1.18
Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool	17	1.03
Christian "⁠loWel⁠" Garcia Antoran	20	1.01
Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong	27	0.94
Denis "⁠denis⁠" Howell	22	0.89
Sergey "⁠lmbt⁠" Bezhanov (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
5th-6th	DreamHack Open Summer
5th-6th	ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals
3rd-4th	DreamHack Open Tours

After respectable playoffs finishes at DreamHack Open Tours and ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals, MOUZ were unable to repeat that feat at the latest edition of DreamHack's Open circuit in Jönköping, barely scraping by Singularity in a series amidst losses to Immortals and SK.

It seems ropz's addition may take longer to adjust to than promised in Dallas, where the Estonian started proving his worth following his below-average first LAN in France.

Most of the Main Qualifier's competition should be more well-suited to the youngster and MOUZ as a whole, who will find themselves at an advantage even against some of the more prominent teams below them.

With the Swiss format playing out the right way, MOUZ will have an edge and should end up repeating a Major appearance. With less-than-ideal first round seeding and some upsets along the way, the format can be quite cutthroat, though, and oskar & co. might have to punch above their weight to qualify. 

The Could-be's

The Could-be's lack the recent results and experience in top-tier competition to earn Favorites status. If we are to assume a perfect scenario in which all seven Favorites make it, the Could-be's have, on paper, one team amongst them that will snatch the remaining spot.

Naturally, perfect scenarios rarely happen and we could see multiple of the next five teams qualifying for the Major, especially with a few upsets along the way. Given the Could-be's' individual talent, seeing no upsets at all would paradoxically be surprising.

BIG (#18)	Age	Rating 2.0
Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz	22	1.35
Johannes "⁠nex⁠" Maget	25	1.14
Kevin "⁠keev⁠" Bartholomäus	25	1.02
Fatih "⁠gob b⁠" Dayik	29	1.02
Nikola "⁠LEGIJA⁠" Ninić	26	0.99
Alexander "⁠kakafu⁠" Szymanczyk (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
1st	Europe Minor - PGL Major Krakow
2nd	ESEA S24 Global Challenge - MDL Global Finals
1st	ESL Meisterschaft Spring Finals
3rd-4th	Copenhagen Games

Perhaps the team with the biggest upset potential are BIG, who came out on top of the Europe Minor earlier this month despite falling down to the lower bracket right off the bat following a loss to Dignitas.

On their way to first place, BIG smashed Envy, took their revenge on the Norwegian-Danish-Portuguese mixture, and passed PENTA with flying colors in the final. 

tabseN is expected to continue walking his path of destruction

tabseN continued his path of destruction in Romania two weeks ago, and nothing less is expected of him this time. Alongside gob b's tactical prowess, the German star could be the difference maker versus the other Could-be's and more importantly the Favorites, who will be the tougher nut to crack.

PENTA (#19)	Age	Rating 2.0
Miikka "⁠suNny⁠" Kemppi	22	1.20
Paweł "⁠innocent⁠" Mocek	23	1.09
Kevin "⁠HS⁠" Tarn	20	1.07
Jesse "⁠zehN⁠" Linjala	25	0.96
Kevin "⁠kRYSTAL⁠" Amend	23	0.91
Niko "⁠naSu⁠" Kovanen (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
2nd	Europe Minor - PGL Major Krakow
5th-8th	GeForce Cup
1st	ESEA S24 Global Challenge - MDL Global Finals

PENTA advanced to the Main Qualifier on the back of a second place at the Europe Minor, most notably knocking Envy down to the lower bracket in a match for one of the three spots.

The team around kRYSTAL impressed within that level of competition, but they'll need to take it up a notch if they are to qualify for the Major, because this time, PENTA will have to beat more than just one established team.

One advantage innocent and company have over most of their potential opponents is their map pool, which is tough to figure out given PENTA play all seven maps to a good level relative to the tier they have competed in.

Otherwise, their number one winning condition is suNny playing his A game, which he has done quite consistently, as well as innocent and HS putting up solid performances alongside him.

Renegades (#23)	Age	Rating 2.0
Noah "⁠Nifty⁠" Francis	19	1.11
Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage	21	1.10
Karlo "⁠USTILO⁠" Pivac	23	1.09
Aaron "⁠AZR⁠" Ward	24	1.04
Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković	20	0.98
Aleksandar "⁠kassad⁠" Trifunović (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
1st	Asia Minor - PGL Major Krakow
6th-7th	IEM Sydney

Unlike the other four Could-be's, Renegades do have one big event in their ledger, IEM Sydney, but their showing there was far from impressive with crushing losses to FaZe, Astralis, and Chiefs.

USTILO's five redeemed themselves at the Asia Minor, breaking their losing streak to TYLOO in finals in their third attempt and clinching the title following a narrow series with the Chinese.

Nifty and jks both played great during the entire Minor and in the grand final, which could be a preview of what Renegades have in store for the Main Qualifier. If those two are able to combine again versus tougher competition, Australia could have a place at the Major again for the first time since ESL One Cologne 2015. 

Dignitas (#26)	Age	Rating 2.0
Ricardo "⁠fox⁠" Pacheco	30	1.20
Jorgen "⁠cromen⁠" Robertsen	22	1.13
Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad	23	1.10
Ruben "⁠RUBINO⁠" Villarroel	23	1.10
Jesper "⁠TENZKI⁠" Plougmann	23	1.07
Morten "⁠zEVES⁠" Vollan (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
3rd	Europe Minor - PGL Major Krakow

Out of all teams at the Main Qualifier, Dignitas have the least experience as a team, having only played together for less than two months with just one LAN showing, at the Minor.

There, RUBINO's roster surprised BIG in a best-of-three for a spot at the Main Qualifier, and got close in their second attempt, taking the German squad to 30 rounds on two maps.

dignitas need fox to turn up the heat once more

fox played a huge part in Dignitas' success and the relatively unknown cromen showed himself in a good light, but their job will get tougher as the stakes increase at the Main Qualifier.

The Norwegian-Portuguese-Danish mixture may be the most individualistic out of just about everyone, with one clear exception in TYLOO, and so they'll all need to show up again to pull off an upset or two in hopes of qualifying for the Major.

GODSENT (#27)	Age	Rating 2.0
Simon "⁠twist⁠" Eliasson	22	1.16
Joakim "⁠disco doplan⁠" Gidetun	21	1.12
Andreas "⁠znajder⁠" Lindberg	24	1.07
Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson	23	1.02
Markus "⁠pronax⁠" Wallsten	26	0.93
Graham "messioso" Pitt (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
3rd-4th	ESEA S24 Global Challenge - MDL Global Finals
7th-8th	cs_summit

Looking at the GODSENT team one by one, there's no denying that the Swedes should be doing better than they have been, with a last-place exit at cs_summit and a semi-finals finish at MDL Global Finals, where they conceded a map to PENTA and a series to BIG.

In light of those results, Alexander "⁠rdl⁠" Redl and pronax decided to bring in Graham "messioso" Pitt, head of RFRSH's Esports Operations, temporarily for a more analytical approach to coaching.

rdl took a step back to make way for a more analytical approach

Given the Brit's lack of experience on the field, it's impossible to assess just how much that addition will bring or what his role will be considering Valve's limitations on coaches, but it's hard to see GODSENT's results getting any worse than before.

In a way, the Swedish side have the highest potential peak out of the Could-be's, but they haven't shown much of it in the four months together as a team. Whether that will change at the Main Qualifier, we'll simply have to wait and see.

The Underdogs

Unsurprisingly, the Underdogs are the three teams with the smallest chance to advance, either due to a complete lack of international experience or poor results when they did get the chance to compete against some of the best teams in the world.

TYLOO (#31)	Age	Rating 2.0
Hansel "⁠BnTeT⁠" Ferdinand	21	1.40
Hui "⁠DD⁠" Wu	22	1.25
Zhen "⁠HZ⁠" Huang	27	1.12
HaoWen "⁠somebody⁠" Xu	21	1.10
Ke "⁠captainMo⁠" Liu	28	1.08

Offline placings in the past three months
2nd	Asia Minor - PGL Major Krakow
1st	CSL Spring Season Finals
15th-16th	SL i-League StarSeries Season 3 Finals (4/5 of the current lineup)

Compared to the next two teams coming from the CIS Minor, TYLOO are peeking out of the crowd thanks to the majority of their players' pedigree on the international field.

The Chinese have yet to show themselves with their latest addition, Indonesian star BnTeT, in a competition of the Main Qualifier's stature, though, which makes the Romanian event the new lineup's and the player's big test.

TYLOO have also recently acquired the services of former Misfits, OpTic, and Liquid coach Luis "⁠peacemaker⁠" Tadeu, who has, however, been forbidden from helping the team during matches due to roster locks. 

Instead, the Brazilian will have to take a more passive approach and attempt to prepare TYLOO for their next encounters in between rounds.

Vega Squadron (#34)	Age	Rating 2.0
Nikolay "⁠mir⁠" Bityukov	21	1.27
Leonid "⁠chopper⁠" Vishnyakov	20	1.26
Pavel "⁠hutji⁠" Lashkov	21	1.11
Dmitriy "⁠jR⁠" Chervak	23	1.06
Sergey "⁠keshandr⁠" Nikishin	23	0.98

Offline placings in the past three months
1st	CIS Minor - PGL Major Krakow

Vega Squadron have once again topped their region's Minor and advanced to the Main Qualifier, after the exact same lineup shocked the scene ahead of the ELEAGUE Major by eliminating Ninjas in Pyjamas.

This year, the Russian-Ukrainian team attended DreamHack Open Leipzig and took eventual winners FlipSid3 to 30 rounds, and BIG to quadruple overtime on Train in their group's deciding match.

Vega Squadron pulled off a miraculous upset over NiP at the previous Main Qualifier

Overall, Vega Squadron will be at a massive disadvantage in practically any match-up outside of the Underdogs at the qualifier, but their opponents shouldn't underestimate the abilities of the likes of mir, who played great during the German event.

Tengri (#37)	Age	Rating 2.0
Bektiyar "⁠fitch⁠" Bahytov	24	1.23
Ramazan "⁠Ramz1kBO$$⁠" Bashizov	17	1.21
Aleksandr "⁠SNk⁠" Semkin	21	1.11
Bakir "⁠pachanga⁠" Kurbanaliev	19	1.10
Anuar "⁠sonic⁠" Abu	26	0.82
Ilnar "⁠cau⁠" Galeev (coach)

Offline placings in the past three months
2nd	CIS Minor - PGL Major Krakow

Tengri rose to recoginition towards the end of 2016 on the back of good performances from Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov, who has since been loaned out to Gambit and remains there to this day.

At the start of the year, the Kazakh side acquired Kyrgyzstan's SNk and pachanga in place of Adlet "⁠keeN⁠" Nyrseytov and Dastan "⁠dastan⁠" Akbayev, and five months later managed to place second at the CIS Minor.

Otherwise, sonic and company have zero offline experience, which essentially makes the Main Qualifier their debut on the global scene.

The Question Mark

FlipSid3 (#39)	Age	Rating 2.0
Yegor "⁠markeloff⁠" Markelov	29	1.07
Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy	30	0.90
Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov	18	0.84
Georgi "⁠WorldEdit⁠" Yaskin	25	0.82
Jan "⁠wayLander⁠" Rahkonen	23	0.75

Offline placings in the past three months
3rd-4th	Adrenaline Cyber League

The Question Mark is a group of just one team, FlipSid3, who didn't deserve to be put in the same box as the remaining Underdogs, simply because they have historically been able to compete against the competition of this stature.

However, B1ad3's team are going into the Main Qualifier as a completely unknown force, as they have only played two maps offline (against Natus Vincere at Adrenaline Cyber League) ever since the ELEAGUE Major, where FlipSid3 finished last with three losses in a row.

FlipSid3 are in a box of their own

The Main Qualifier will serve as FlipSid3's chance to make it back to the top 30, where they've been missing for about two months. In theory, they should match at least the Could-be's if FlipSid3 replicate their level from the start of the year when they won DreamHack Open Leipzig, but we simply can't know whether they will due to the lack of appearances since.