ESL Pro League Season 18 groups set

23-6-2023 18:07

28 out of 32 teams at the one-month-long event are now known and divided into four groups.

ESL has announced the group distribution and invites for the upcoming 18th season of ESL Pro League, which is set to be played from August 30 to October 1. The groups have been seeded and drawn using the team's ESL World Ranking, with the four remaining qualified teams receiving the lowest seed in each group.

The newest season of EPL will be played in the same expanded format of 32 teams, who will battle it out across four groups of eight featuring a triple elimination format for a place in the 16-team playoffs.

Last season's champions FaZe headline Group C

Group A is headlined by BLAST.tv Paris Major champions Vitality, who have recently removed Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen in favor of Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan, and their grand final opponents in Paris, GamerLegion. FURIA, Ninjas in Pyjamas, and Astralis accompany the aforementioned duo as three more new-look teams in the top 20, with Movistar Riders and Grayhound rounding out the current Group A teams.

Heroic are the top seed in Group B and are joined by ENCE as another top-five team in the world rankings. They will be met by MOUZ, Monte, and BIG, who are also among the teams making moves in the current offseason. Two teams from the Americas, MIBR and Evil Geniuses, complete the group.

Group C's top dogs are FaZe and Natus Vincere, with the latter set to start the second half of the year with an overhauled European roster. Apeks and fnatic round out the European contingent of the group, with a variety of teams from all over the world joining them — Imperial, Rare Atom, and ATK.

The final group of the tournament features three top 10 teams in G2, Cloud9, and Liquid, as well as Virtus.pro, who qualified for EPL S18 due to their recent win at ESL Challenger Katowice 2023. Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski's Complexity are also in Group D alongside 9INE and Lynn Vision.

Group distribution

Group A

Qualified team

Group B

Qualified team

Group C

Qualified team

Group D

Qualified team

The remaining four slots will be given to teams that qualify through the three regional qualifiers, with the slot distribution looking as follows:

NC Europe Qualifier

Oceania Open Qualifier

South America Open Qualifier

TOP 30 TRANSFERS

No team

SUB

All transfers

Nice

2023-06-23 18:08

11 replies

Yay can't wait for one month of groups

2023-06-23 18:10

10 replies

This, but unironically.

2023-06-23 18:32

4 replies

Faze ez group again

2023-06-23 18:50

2023-06-23 19:04

Group C and D sound fun and intersting considering the recent roster changes and "top" teams there

2023-06-23 19:47

+11111

2023-06-24 01:04

i fucking hate elague so much

2023-06-23 18:58

1 reply

this is esl not eleague :p

2023-06-23 20:52

unironically gonna enjoy this with all the new rosters, gonna be exciting to see who can perform from the get-go and who can't

2023-06-23 21:24

2 replies

Lowkey makes groups exciting

2023-06-24 03:27

2023-06-24 10:07

Wtf

Great! LFG G2!!!

2023-06-23 18:09

group D is stacked

C9 and G2 always get a hot groups last few years

2023-06-23 19:19

Vitality and Heroic with the easiest groups. Why does Vitality consistently get the easy route? Something is fishy here.

2023-06-23 19:44

I dislike vitality but vitality has got historically toughest groups in ESL pro league as far as i remember after a long time they have got wasy groups probably because of no1/2 seeding

2023-06-23 20:04

It is done off world rankings. If the system was to work perfectly they should, in theory, get the easiest group

2023-06-23 21:56

nah, c9 had easy group on 15 and 16 seasons

2023-06-23 19:50

With what?

2023-06-23 21:12

C9, G2, VP, TL

2023-06-23 23:12

3 replies

G2 i give you. TL new team looks shit, C9 constant disappointment, VP hasn’t done anything since their Rio mega fluke.

2023-06-24 15:07

With the rumored C9 roster though, they will be deadly (but it's C9 and you're right but you also can't count them out). TL does look garbo. VP is meh

2023-06-24 17:42

Yeah if C9 gets the rumored team it will be very interesting indeed. Might be the winners of this whole crazy shufflemania :-D

2023-06-24 20:44

ez4ence

liquid and col in one group LFG

Elige v Liquid LMAOOO

How is it possible that Liquid and CoL are always in the same group or play each other lol

Well atleast it’s not na vs na anymore 🥲

2023-06-23 18:11

They always used to have more NA teams in Group D so they can do 1 trip to play playoffs (edit: as well) if they make it, guess they've just not stopped doing that?

2023-06-23 18:38

I think this is the first time in years that BR teams are not in the same group lol Elige X Liquid gonna be very nice to watch

2023-06-24 05:13

lets hope it wont be a 9-5 job for the 'talents' this time LMAOOO

Group d the most interesting

Group B for Boring

Group D is going to be a bloodbath

I want Liquid to get slaughtered by CoL 😂

2023-06-23 19:16

2023-06-23 20:42

would be hilarious tbh xD

2023-06-23 21:11

Might happen tbh

2023-06-23 23:09

EZ 4 9INE

2023-06-23 18:12

ez for c9

2023-06-23 18:15

THERE SHOULD BE ONLY 1 EPL EVENT PER YEAR

Im going to feel so sorry for the two chinese teams there lmao.

2023-06-23 18:17

group D is stacked wtf

2023-06-23 18:18

A is also though

2023-06-23 18:42

pretty much everywhere we can see 4 favourites to go through apart from group a group a: vitality,gl, and 2 slots between furia/astralis/nip group b heroic ence mouz big/monte group c faze navi apeks fnatic group d liquid g2 vp c9 this esl is gonna be a banger

+1 actually good groups for once

2023-06-23 19:37

No way liquid advances with rainwaker and osee Col>>>them

2023-06-23 20:26

honestly osee has been better, not saying liquid is good cuz they're mediocre but prob wont lose vs col

2023-06-23 20:48

lmao ez4g2

2023-06-23 18:21

So many are going to play vs former teams. Group D is for death

2023-06-23 18:23

2023-06-23 18:26

Grayhound gonna surprise a lot of people with this run

2023-06-23 18:29

hltv.org/matches/2363837/apeks-vs-grayho.. hltv.org/matches/2364396/cloud9-vs-grayh..

2023-06-23 19:33

wasted spot in the last 5 years

2023-06-23 19:58

grayhound will upgrade if they replace sico

2023-06-23 21:04

i love sico but unfortunately i agree

2023-06-25 13:21

Very nice

2023-06-23 18:33

Be Lynn Vision Finally a chance to compete against stronger Competition Group D incident

ngl Im going to feel so sorry for the two chinese teams there lmao.

2023-06-23 18:37

Group A weak as fuck

2023-06-23 18:36

Damn we always have to face Heroic

2023-06-23 18:40

Liquid EU flag

2023-06-23 18:43

Xddddddddddddddddddddddddd

2023-06-23 19:01

EZ for COL

G2 group stacked as always lol

2023-06-23 19:02

Group D pretty unbalanced

2023-06-23 19:06

monte will have 2 players when pro league starts

2023-06-23 19:07

EPL somehow always manage to make one of the groups super boring (and normally it’s group B) and others stacked af and there are so many teams constantly playing against each other at groups. That’s ridiculous

2023-06-23 19:10

Let's go Vita, Ence and MOUZ

Nice to see Nip swed flag back .

2023-06-23 19:18

ESL pls remove the "Last Chance" bracket, it prolongs an already long tournament and doesn't provide any improvement in quality of teams. There are many groups, 3 from each is enough for playoffs.

group D bruh 💀

2023-06-23 19:24

Best Tournament but make it once a year pls. I'd rather have this format once a year with good venue and good crowd rather than this. We need new tournaments abeg :(

2023-06-23 19:31

+1 I really like this type of tournament but 1 per year is enough

2023-06-23 19:40

ESL <3

2023-06-23 19:41

Who can Gamerlegion get to have a good team if they sell iM and siuhy?

2023-06-23 19:43

Csgo or cs2?

2023-06-23 19:53

Polish team in Pro League again!!! Great!

2023-06-23 20:01

Let's Go CoL knock out TL plz and thank you :D

2023-06-23 20:06

?? Wrong script normally faze is in group with heroic and c9

2023-06-23 20:17

ESL hates Poland 100% every fucking time Polish teams get the hardest group

2023-06-23 20:28

Pls dupreeh go to astralis and play against vita and then rekt them plssssssssss

2023-06-23 20:33

WHY IS CLOUD9 ALWAYS IN D

2023-06-23 20:38

No ITB no party

2023-06-23 20:39

Vitality got pretty lucky, maybe new Furia will be scary but doubt it

2023-06-23 20:47

Group D looks like the most interesting one for me. Group C looks the weakest

2023-06-23 21:10

Lynn vision on LAN 😎

LAN dodgers for the longest time... but hope they do well along with RA

2023-06-23 21:23

Pog

2023-06-23 21:58

wow that's actually doable (making playoffs) for BIG

2023-06-23 22:09

Please make it the same as last time. It was such a great vibe. Very relaxing etc. But also exciting. The thing with 2 casters and 1 pro was also very interesting. Especially Xertion delivered on all fronts. That was hell of a insight into a pro players mind. I am excited for Proleague ! Nice to always have something to watch on the evening.

2023-06-23 23:02

Navi vs vitality 3-2 final Mvp aleksib

I hope that 9ine wik show something, but probably they are going back to tier polska.

2023-06-24 00:25

complexity gonna bang!!

Yay

2023-06-24 18:54

Horrible format that takes too long. No tournament should be more than 2 weeks.

2023-06-25 16:01

<best Tournament but make it once a year pls. I'd rather have this format once a year with good venue and good crowd rather than this. We need new tournaments

2023-06-26 02:49

Banger groups

2023-06-28 16:12