BLAST Premier World Final teams, format, schedule, prizes, talent

11-12-2023 14:14

The final Big Event of 2023, BLAST Premier World Final, starts on Wednesday. Here's everything you need to know about it.

BLAST World Final will be held in Dubai for the second year running

BetBoom Dacha just ended in Dubai, but the Counter-Strike circuit will remain in the United Arab Emirates for a while longer. BLAST Premier World Final will start on December 13 and serve as the final Big Event of the year with seven top-ten teams in attendance.

The event will see FaZe debut with David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský, with MOUZ consequently coming into the tournament using Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin as a temporary addition, and G2 make their first LAN appearance with Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković.

Vitality will make their second appearance since winning the BLAST Premier Fall Final with newest addition William "⁠mezii⁠" Merriman, and the same goes for ENCE, who had a less successful debut with Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander and Jakub "⁠kuben⁠" Gurczyński as their new IGL-coach combo at Elisa Masters Espoo.

HEROIC are another team with a temporary roster after their plans were thrown into disarray due to the departure of Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund and Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard, which means the Danish team will attend the event with Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen, Rasmus "⁠Zyphon⁠" Nordfoss and Jason "⁠salazar⁠" Salazar.

Participating teams and format

Eight teams will take part in the BLAST Premier World final. FaZe and MOUZ have qualified by winning respective seasons of ESL Pro League, HEROIC booked their spot after their BLAST Spring Final victory, and Vitality are set to appear at the event due to their BLAST.tv Paris Major victory earlier in the year.

The remaining four teams, ENCE, G2, Natus Vincere, and Cloud9 were all invited thanks to their placing on the BLAST World Leaderboard.

These teams have been split into two groups of four, which will play out in a double-elimination, best-of-three format.

Group A

Group B

The winners of the opening games qualify for the playoffs and head to the upper-bracket final. The winner of that game will earn a direct semi-final berth, whilst the loser starts their playoff run in the quarter-finals.

Losers of the opening group-stage games head to the lower bracket, where they will play for their tournament lives. The lower bracket winner will head to the quarter-finals, whilst the loser will be eliminated.

The six-team playoffs will use a best-of-three, single-elimination format.

Schedule and opening matchups

BLAST Premier World Final will run from December 13-17, with the first two days dedicated to the group stage and three to the playoffs.

Games kick off at 07:00 on the first two days of action, 10:00 on the quarter-final day, 12:30 on the semi-final day, and 15:00 for Sunday's grand final.

The full schedule is as follows:

Wednesday, December 13

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier World Final 2023
13/12/2023	Cloud9 07:00 ENCE	Match
13/12/2023	Vitality 09:25 Natus Vincere	Match
13/12/2023	FaZe 11:35 HEROIC	Match
13/12/2023	MOUZ 14:05 G2	Match

Thursday, December 14

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier World Final 2023
14/12/2023	ENCE 07:00 Natus Vincere	Match
14/12/2023	Cloud9 10:05 Vitality	Match
14/12/2023	HEROIC 12:30 MOUZ	Match
14/12/2023	FaZe 14:25 G2	Match

Friday, December 15

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier World Final 2023
15/12/2023	Cloud9 10:00 MOUZ	Match
15/12/2023	Natus Vincere 12:05 G2	Match

Saturday, December 16

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier World Final 2023
16/12/2023	FaZe 12:30 MOUZ	Match
16/12/2023	Vitality 15:30 Natus Vincere	Match

Sunday, December 17

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier World Final 2023
17/12/2023	FaZe 15:00 Vitality	Match

Prizes

A total of $1,000,000 is on offer at the BLAST World Final, with the winning team set to take home $500,000 alongside the trophy.

1. $500,000
2. $250,000
3-4. $85,000
5-6. $25,000
7-8. $15,000

Talent lineup

Broadcast talent

HLTV Coverage

HLTV will have Radosław "MAKKU" Makuch and Luís "MIRAA" Mira at BLAST World Final to provide coverage of the event in the form of photos, videos, and interviews.

HLTV will also offer daily live updated posts with highlights from the action, as well as match reports, player comments, and other interesting stories from Abu Dhabi.

Let's go :D Excited to see Frozen in FaZe for the first time!

2023-12-11 14:15

9 replies

Navi with the longest standing roster out of all teams xD

2023-12-11 14:40

5 replies

Navi added wonderful not that long ago

2023-12-11 15:33

4 replies

"BLAST World Final will be held in Dubai for the second year running" it wont lol

2023-12-11 15:38

2 replies

What does this have to do with Navi roster

2023-12-11 16:48

1 reply

He wanted to post his message at the top of the comments section so he used your comment

2023-12-11 17:06

Everyone else added a player even less long ago

2023-12-11 16:44

+1 hope they reset after lost final vs Vitality where Twistzz went insane 12 ADR on map1, frozen clears him now with frozen they should win even more maps in row

2023-12-11 16:05

Not a single NA or SA Player in this event. Must Really be a Final ;)

2023-12-11 16:29

Hijacking top comment to say: Unlucko for Col. Probably at least a top 3 team if they went to this event but Blast decided that they'd let Heroic use three substitues. Plus teams dont lose any points for changing players, so despite the fact that Heroic, C9, Navi, etc all have different cores from the start of the year they were completely unaffected

2023-12-11 18:39

ez faze

2023-12-11 14:16

Stacked af No chances for C9 with Hobbit tho

2023-12-11 14:18

22 replies

+1 they shouldve kick him ages ago and made sure to keep sh1ro (you can argue for both boom and nafany to be igl)

2023-12-11 14:32

21 replies

Agreed

2023-12-11 14:33

20 replies

also i feel like navi and heroic kinda unstack it all

2023-12-11 14:34

19 replies

NaVi will be fine imo. Heroic is questionable

2023-12-11 14:35

18 replies

complexity are better than navi (see fall final) for sure, maybe also monte

17 replies

It's NaVi's first tournament with Wonderful and good preparation, I expect them to bang

2023-12-11 14:42

14 replies

for me navi current roster feels like patchwork

2023-12-11 14:43

13 replies

Yea, unfortunately, this s fucked. I understand they don't wanna Russians, but they could build decent roster out if Ukrainians, Kazakhs, maby with Russian speaking European like Yekindar, Jl, Faven. I believe one of the reasons why Simple left is transition to English

2023-12-11 14:46

12 replies

nah s1mple had a lot more important reasons. also faveN speaks russian?

2023-12-11 14:48

11 replies

Yes. His parents are from Kazakhstan

2023-12-11 14:49

10 replies

damn then sth like that could actually be sick

2023-12-11 14:50

I remember Degster played for Sprout as a standin and he said Faven is a nice person and he speaks good Russian

2023-12-11 14:51

3 replies

i don't think their problem is that they are international now the roster just isn't that good but why wouldn't they sign russian players? The people are not connected to the war/their government If a player is russian but neutral that should be fine in my eyes (obviously i wouldn't sign a putin hardliner as ukrainian org) but the average russian did nothing wrong

2023-12-11 15:19

They made that decision a while ago. I remember maybe a year or more ago now, they removed all russian players from their 2ndary teams. Boomych was still playing for them. I agree with you though. I think it should be fine, but they can do what they like and discriminate based on your place of birth. /shrug

2023-12-11 17:51

yeah i guess they can in most conflicts no party is 100% right/innocent

2023-12-11 21:05

they could find an iM upgrade 4 sure but for aleksib could be pretty hard

Yeah, that's the problem. Maybe since S1mple is benched they can try Sdy one more time. Or risk and go for Nealan/Lack1

2023-12-11 14:52

either way not gonna happen anytime soon sadly

2023-12-11 14:53

Nealan XDDDD

2023-12-12 09:32

Also M0nesy said multiple times how good Fear is

At least as a former NaVi fan I want to believe they're going to bang

i stopped caring about navi completely when s1mple left if not way before that

2023-12-11 14:45

G2 and Faze both out after first round. Frozen gonna mess it up for them.

2023-12-11 14:21

8 replies

i doubt faze

2023-12-11 14:22

7 replies

Nah. Karrigan been slacking. Plus Frozen doesnt fit well with karrigans gameplay. I dont see them making it to semis. Ropz and Broky would need to do some insane carrying.

2023-12-11 14:24

6 replies

you know frozen and karrigan weretogether in mouz for 2 years?

*frozen, karrigan and ropz

2023-12-11 16:46

also won Pro League together

2023-12-11 18:58

Yup. And it fell apart. Bringing back that same core isnt gon a work.

2023-12-12 02:28

How did it fell apart lmao???? Karrigan had great results with MOUZ until the very end of LAN era early 2020. Covid online era was a joke and during covid Faze bought out karrigan back from MOUZ.

2023-12-12 05:15

your name says everything..

2023-12-12 05:41

easy tournament for NiKo

2023-12-11 14:25

2023-12-11 14:47

hltv.org/matches/2368435/g2-vs-guild-eag.. this you???

2023-12-11 16:38

G2 different beast on LAN bro

2023-12-11 17:05

Oh yeah I see

2023-12-11 18:59

Should have been Astralis instead of dead Heroic here

2023-12-11 14:27

xdd

2023-12-11 14:29

Shhh no place for spineless fellas

2023-12-11 16:47

xdddd, astralis should play tier 3 events, not tier 1

2023-12-11 17:33

free money for vit

2023-12-11 14:31

calme toi avec l'arrogance. mais allez vita :D

haha je bait juste tkt :)

2023-12-11 15:21

imho ENCE probably makes roster change at some point, so Glaive and kuben can integrate their system to ENCE. Not sure of course, but I have a gut feeling that someone is replaced if they don't perform. Probably after major or something.

2023-12-11 14:38

only 8 teams. kind of meh

2023-12-11 14:39

Navi winning

Most likely another trophy for Vitality , unless FaZe gonna pull some magic with frozen right away. C9 might be the only threat along Vita and FaZe MOUZ with Brollan - meh G2 with nexa - tier 2 Heroic - stealing spots with random temporary lineups ENCE - dead without Snappi Na'Vi - might reach playoffs , nothing more than that with one event wonder iM

2023-12-11 14:54

16 replies

heroic's spot was earned after the spring finals before they just instantaneously imploded wdym?

2023-12-11 14:56

I mean that they got a spot with a roster that doesn't exist anymore and now all we get is a random bunch of Danish players wearing Heroic shirts.

2023-12-11 14:57

+1 can confirm

2023-12-11 15:02

Tbf then vita shouldn't be here because they got this spot after winning the major with the danes on the roster Same could be said for every team attending this event

2023-12-11 15:49

what are you talking about? they have the core of spinx,apex,zywoo which means they can still win Intel GSL, they can also qualify

2023-12-11 15:54

i mean he didn't really mention the core so I said whatever I did/ tbf i also forgot that the core of the roster has to stay intact so yep my bad

2023-12-11 22:03

They just won fall finals a month ago with this core xd

2023-12-12 14:26

ENCE and Na'Vi could surprise us all (the potential is there in both teams) it's unlikely tho G2 and Heroic no chance i agree

2023-12-11 15:22

with Na'Vi I might agree, with ENCE nope ... since Snappi left they seem dead and unmotivated, like they're unhappy with this change.

i get what you are saying but if they fixed some stuff behind closed doors the potential is there they got heavy hitters, good igl, good awp seems like the chemistry is the only problem (a big one that is)

2023-12-11 15:42

I agree I'm just not sure gla1ve in 2023-2024 is the real deal to be honest... lets not forget zonic was the mastermind in prime Astralis

2023-12-11 16:12

yes, i guess only time will tell

2023-12-11 20:59

Vitality closing the year would be amazing. This would be NaVi alike style to end the year nevertheless winning 2 blasts similiar to Prime NaVi in 2021 to close the year.

I'd actually love to see that

I mean frozen is top5 player in the world and he played with ropz and karrigan for 2 years, so I would not count them out so early. Plus remember early 2022 when Faze added ropz and went on to win 3 straight event including Katowice and Major

2023-12-11 16:49

I'm surely not counting them out, they are most likely the biggest rivals of Vitality right now in this tournament.

2023-12-11 17:04

No Furia and Mibr :(

2023-12-11 15:20

not good enough sadly

2023-12-11 15:58

Sad but true

2023-12-11 16:06

Why is opening match so early? correct me if I'm wrong - doesn't that first match start at 7am local time??

2023-12-11 15:37

Lets go

2023-12-11 16:10

No Brazil, weird and sad for the TO (way lower spectator numbers)

2023-12-11 16:16

That's the last time tho, it was a 2 year contract with Abu Dhabi so now it is the last tournament there, next one is in Denmark i think

2023-12-11 17:14

It’s gonna be sad to see Navi going out in groups again

2023-12-11 16:20

worst timezone ever

2023-12-11 17:22

I was about to make fun of Brazil but I gotta agree with you on this one.

2023-12-11 18:48

What’s crazy is G2 is probably the worst team here

2023-12-11 17:34

Heroic?With zyphon and salazar.G2 have monesy and niko

2023-12-11 19:18

They also lost to Aurora and guild eagles, while at least heroic have a great system in place from Xizt to keep this team together and keep the floor high, while G2 just go with the flow most games

2023-12-12 01:04

#FazeUp let's finish the year on a high

2023-12-11 18:17

ez 4 Faze

All these rosters all fresh with changes Hoping for some real interesting cs

2023-12-11 20:44

Vitality how the hack they are always on the easy group every tournament this team is so lucky

2023-12-11 22:46

The winner will be either of vitality, G2 or Navi.

2023-12-11 23:35

All big CS2 events so far: FaZe won all expect one where they came second. Your not so high iq brain come to result that FaZe won't be one of teams that would win... LOL No wonder Squid Game was filmed about your country.

2023-12-12 02:41