Rising Stars CIS & Europe to start

The Rising Stars Series was announced by E-frag.net in late November and promised six regional tournaments across the globe with a minimum of eight teams and $2,000 per region. The goal of the tournaments was to give lesser known teams and players a chance to gain exposure.

After the North American series was cancelled and European and CIS region series were added, the past few weeks have seen the following winners crowned in their respective regions:

• Rising Stars Balkans - December 18-20 ($2,000), Winner: E-frag.net
• Rising Stars South America - January 12-14 ($3,000), Winner:  g3x
• Rising Stars North Africa - January 16-18 ($2,000), Winner:  Viva Algeria
• Rising Stars South-East Asia - January 19-25 ($3,000), Winner: TheMongolz
• Rising Stars CIS - January 26-29 ($3,000), Winner:  Binary Dragons
• Rising Stars Europe - January 29-February 1 ($3,000), Winner:  Revival

E-frag.net have now announced information for the remaining two tournaments, publishing articles on both Rising Stars CIS and Rising Stars Europe.

XANTARES and Space Soldiers receive an invite to Rising Stars Europe

Rising Stars CIS is first up and features a number of teams who were recently seen competing at the CIS Minor such as semifinalists Arcade and Rebels in addition to Quest and Binary Dragons. The total team list is:

Null element Rebels	Arcade
Enso	Quest
PARTY	Revolution
ELTZ	Binary Dragons

Teams will compete for $3,000 in cash with $2,000 going to the winner and $1,000 going to the runner-up. All games are best-of-three and the quarter-finals match-ups for Rising Stars CIS can be found below.

Quest	vs.	Enso
ELTZ	vs.	Binary Dragons
Arcade	vs.	Revolution
Null element Rebels	vs.	PARTY

Meanwhile Rising Stars Europe will feature a similar prize-pool and format, however this time four teams have been invited whereas the remaining four spots will be determined via two online, 128-team, and best-of-one qualifiers in which the finalists of each qualifier will advance to the main tournament.

• Qualifier #1 Sign-Up, January 27
• Qualifier #2 Sign-Up, January 28

As for a current teams list, it appears as follows for Rising Stars Europe:

ALTERNATE aTTaX	RCTIC
Space Soldiers	LDLC Blue
Qualifier #1	Qualifier #1
Qualifier #2	Qualifier #2

The quarter-finals match-ups are meanwhile:

Space Soldiers	vs.	Qualifier #1 winner
RCTIC	vs.	Qualifier #2 runner-up
ALTERNATE aTTaX	vs.	Qualifier #1 runner-up
LDLC Blue	vs.	Qualifier #2 winner

As always, you can find the matches over at our Matches panel when they go live and the action will be streamed at azubu.tv/efragtv.

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