HLTV.org live from Columbus

MLG Columbus 2016 is CS:GO's eighth official Major and will set the bar as being the first $1 million Major and the first Major on North American soil. The first three days of the event, the group stages, will play out without an audience at the MLG Arena and the event will then move to the sold-out Nationwide Arena for the playoffs.

Several important bits of news should be considered before the first group stage match kicks off. A new veto system is being used at this event in the best-of-ones, where one team vetoes three maps, the other only two, and the map will be chosen randomly out of the remaining two in the pool.

In addition, Björn "⁠THREAT⁠" Pers will officially play with Ninjas in Pyjamas throughout the event as Jacob "⁠pyth⁠" Mourujärvi has had his visa approved, but it will require 48 hours to process, meaning that the player will only be able to arrive on Friday at the earliest.

We have created a viewer's guide for the event where you can find the talent list for both the English and the Russian cast, links to all four of our comprehensive group previews, links to all the player interviews done for the event, and any other important information about the Major.

Today's schedule looks as follows:

16:00	Ninjas in Pyjamas	vs. FlipSid3	BO1
17:10	Luminosity	vs. MOUZ	BO1
18:20	FaZe	vs. Liquid	BO1
19:30	fnatic	vs. Splyce	BO1
20:40	Envy	vs. CLG	BO1
21:50	Astralis	vs. Gambit	BO1
23:00	Natus Vincere	vs. Cloud9	BO1
00:10	Virtus.pro	vs. G2	BO1

A four-man team from HLTV.org is on site at the MLG Arena and will be providing the best coverage possible of the eighth Major. Our Twitter which can be found @HLTVorg will provide constant updates from the event.

There will be two streams of the event: one on Twitch and one on the MLG site.

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