ESL confirms that IEM Cologne will be a LAN event

The showpiece event will kick off in less than two weeks as a studio competition.

ESL has confirmed that IEM Cologne 2021 will be an in-person event, making it the first elite Counter-Strike tournament to be held on LAN since the coronavirus pandemic began, in March 2020. The showpiece competition will take place from July 6-18 and will feature 24 of the world's best teams, with $1 million on offer.

IEM Cologne will be played without an audience in a studio environment, as mentioned in the revised tournament calendar released by ESL in April. According to the new roadmap, ESL's first in-person event with an audience will be IEM Winter, which will be held from December 2-12 in Asia.

IEM Cologne 2021 will begin on July 6

"We will be in touch with the community in the coming days to explain better what to expect and how it's all coming together," Michal "Carmac" Blicharz, vice-president of pro gaming at ESL, wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Counter-Strike fans will breathe a sigh of relief at the return of in-person events after more than a year of mostly online action. The last major CS:GO tournament that was held on LAN was IEM Katowice 2020, where the playoffs had to be played behind closed doors due to the Silesian Governor's concerns amid the coronavirus outbreak. With no one watching from the stands at Spodek, Natus Vincere lifted the trophy with a three-map sweep of G2.

IEM Cologne 2021 will kick off with the Play-In stage, a two-day qualifier with 16 teams in attendance. The top eight teams of this double-elimination bracket will proceed to the main tournament, joining the eight-best teams from the ESL Pro Tour (Road to Cologne) leaderboard.

The team list for the IEM Cologne Play-In is as follows.

Complexity
Spirit
Ninjas in Pyjamas
MOUZ
BIG
Vitality
FaZe
OG

Evil Geniuses
Bad News Bears
Sprout
MIBR
LDLC
Renegades
TeamOne
ViCi

The following eight teams have already secured spots in the main stage:

Gambit
HEROIC
Virtus.pro
FURIA

Astralis
Natus Vincere
G2
Liquid

IEM Cologne, which was rebranded in April from its old ESL One Cologne moniker following a new partnership deal between ESL and Intel, will count towards Intel Grand Slam Season 3 as a Masters Championship event. Gambit, Natus Vincere and Astralis are joint leaders in the race for the $1 million prize with two tournament wins apiece, followed by HEROIC and MOUZ, both with one victory.