ESL Pro League Season 21 teams, format, schedule, prizes, fantasy, talent

27-2-2025 19:36

Another all-BO3 Swiss stage is coming at us fast.

Pro League is headed to Stockholm for 2025

Format

The event has moved from Malta to ESL's studios in Stockholm, and will not have a crowd present for playoffs.

The format is also new; ESL has switched the Pro League to two Swiss-style group stages, preceding an eight-team playoff.

All matches will be best of three, until the best of five grand final. There is no third-place decider.

Teams are seeded by their peers, using the same system that ESL used for the IEM Katowice 2019 Major. You can see where teams placed each other here, with paiN benefitting the most from the system in Stage 1 by jumping up three places.

Teams

FaZe are the notable absentees, having declined an invite to the Swedish studio event. Complexity, BIG, and Astralis were the teams that just missed out on an invite via Valve's January 6 Regional Standings.

But after they skipped PGL Cluj-Napoca, the big dogs of Spirit, Vitality, G2, Natus Vincere and Liquid are all back in action.

FaZe skip ESL Pro League 21 as invites revealed

12 spots were handed out using Valve's ranking (eight to stage 2, four to stage 1), with the other 12 on offer in last year's ESL Challenger Leagues.

HEROIC qualify after acquiring the Sangal core that won ECL48 in Europe, while we'll get to see Aussie sides Housebets and Mindfreak have a stab at tier one.

Stage 2

Stage 1 - in seed order
1.

Eternal Fire
2.

paiN
3.

3DMAX
4.

FURIA
5.

GamerLegion
6.

HEROIC
7.

MIBR
8.

FlyQuest

M80
10.

Nemiga
11.

SAW
12.

NRG
13.

Lynn Vision
14.

TYLOO
15.

Housebets
16.

Mindfreak

Schedule

The event will run two streams for the group stage, with four best of threes per day starting at 10:30 .

The play-in will run from March 1-5, with eight Stage 2 spots on offer. Then, 16 teams will do battle in the event proper from March 7-16.

These matches will kick off day one:

Date	Matches
ESL Pro League Season 21 Stage 1
01/03/2025	Eternal Fire 10:30 Mindfreak	Match
01/03/2025	M80 10:30 FlyQuest	Match
01/03/2025	HEROIC 13:00 SAW	Match
01/03/2025	3DMAX 13:00 TYLOO	Match
01/03/2025	MIBR 15:30 Nemiga	Match
01/03/2025	FURIA 16:10 Lynn Vision	Match
01/03/2025	GamerLegion 18:15 NRG	Match
01/03/2025	paiN 18:45 Housebets	Match

Prizes

The event has a $1,000,000 prize pool, with $400k going to players and $600k going to clubs —- a key factor for teams' attendance that PGL did not offer.

The pot will be distributed as follows:

1st. $100,000 (+$150,000 club share)
2nd. $50,000 (+$75,000 club share)
3-4th. $25,000 (+$55,000 club share)
5-8th. $18,000 (+$40,000 club share)
9-11th. $13,500 (+$25,000 club share)
12-14th. $10,500 (+$10,000 club share)
15-16th. $8,500
17-19th. $6,500
20-22nd. $4,500
23-24th. $3,000