BLAST Austin Major teams, format, schedule, prizes, talent, fantasy

29-5-2025 20:11

Here is everything you need to know about North America's first Major since 2018.

The first Major of 2025 is only a few days away. Kicking off on June 3, the BLAST.tv Austin Major will begin with three Swiss stages, held behind closed doors. Once the field has been whittled down to the final eight teams, the tournament will move to the Moody Center for the playoffs between June 19-22.

Teams and format

The Austin Major will be the first to feature the new 32-team format after Valve decided to expand the tournament from 24 teams.

Valve confirm move to 32-team Majors

There will be three Swiss stages, each featuring 16 teams and with a best-of-three format only in the advancement and elimination matches (the other games will be best-of-one affairs). The eight teams coming out of Stage 3 will progress to the single-elimination, best-of-three playoffs.

Stage 1 will feature the 16 teams who came through the Major Regional Qualifiers (MRQ) held in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas. The other 16 teams received direct invites to the Major through Valve's ranking and are split equally between Stage 2 and 3.

On May 21, BLAST announced that BESTIA would be replaced by Legacy in Stage 1 after the Argentine team was unable to secure U.S. visas for two players by the May 21 deadline, set only five days earlier.

BLAST hold firm on Major substitution; BESTIA CEO threatens legal action

The visas for the last two players came through on May 22, and BESTIA have threatened with legal action if the team is unable to compete at the Major, stating that there was never an official communication about a deadline. On May 29, BESTIA CEO Alejandro "PapoMC" Lococo wrote on X that the organization is using "every available tool" to achieve its goal of competing in Austin.

Stage 3

Stage 2

Stage 1

Schedule

The schedule for the opening matches of Stage 1 is as follows:

Date	Matches
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 Stage 1
03/06/2025	HEROIC 17:20 Chinggis Warriors	Match
03/06/2025	Complexity 17:30 OG	Match
03/06/2025	B8 18:15 Imperial	Match
03/06/2025	BetBoom 18:30 Nemiga	Match
03/06/2025	TYLOO 19:40 NRG	Match
03/06/2025	Lynn Vision 19:45 Legacy	Match
03/06/2025	Wildcard 20:30 Metizport	Match
03/06/2025	FlyQuest 20:50 Fluxo	Match

You can find the full schedule by clicking the links below:

Don't forget to check out our new Swiss simulator, where you can predict how the Swiss stages will play out.

Talent

Freya "⁠Freya⁠" Spiers - Desk host/Interviewer
James "⁠BanKs⁠" Banks - Desk host/Interviewer
Jacob "⁠Pimp⁠" Winneche - Analyst
Alex "⁠Mauisnake⁠" Ellenberg - Analyst
Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen - Analyst
Jason "⁠moses⁠" O'Toole - Analyst
Danny "⁠mahone⁠" Hsieh - Analyst
Conner "⁠Scrawny⁠" Girvan - Caster
Mohan "⁠launders⁠" Govindasamy - Caster
Alex "⁠Machine⁠" Richardson - Caster
Chad "⁠SPUNJ⁠" Burchill - Caster
Anders "⁠Anders⁠" Blume - Caster
Daniel "⁠ddk⁠" Kapadia - Caster
Harry "⁠JustHarry⁠" Russell - Caster
Hugo "⁠Hugo⁠" Byron - Caster
Mike "⁠DarfMike⁠" Winnick - Content reporter
Eefje "⁠sjokz⁠" Depoortere - Show host
Tres "⁠stunna⁠" Saranthus - Show host

Prizes

1. $500,000
2. $170,000
3-4. $80,000
5-8. $45,000
9-16. $20,000
17-24. $10,000

Fantasy

The fantasy game for Stage 1 of the Major is now live, and you can make your team here. The game will have season points and the following prizes by Skin.Club:

1. Hydra Gloves | Mangrove (Field-Tested)
2. AWP | Hyper Beast (Field-Tested)
3. M4A1-S | Hyper Beast (Field-Tested)

bo3 final

2025-05-29 20:12

4 replies

2025-05-29 20:16

too based

2025-05-29 21:32

Mickey Mouse Blast Major

2025-05-29 23:29

ahahahahahah

2025-05-30 22:58

500000$ first place like we in 2020

2025-05-29 20:13

why is talent in the title if there is no information

2025-05-29 20:14

1 reply

clickb8/8

2025-05-29 22:55

fuck bo1 majors are really quite lame nowadays compared to other tournaments. sad.

2025-05-29 20:15

tournament will last over a month if you make it bo3, think...

2025-05-29 20:18

3 replies

no, it wouldn't. besides you don't have to make all stages bo3, though they should.

2025-05-29 20:22

19 days (without dayoffs) if they change all games in bo3 format 5 days for stage1 5 days for stage2 5 days for stage3 4 days for playoffs Maybe, add 1 day between every stage and in total we will have 22 days

2025-05-29 20:28

Bo1 every stage take 5 days, bo3 will take 5 days

2025-05-29 20:48

Major

Shitty qualifiers and shitty Major format. Shitty all around. Yup.

2025-05-29 20:19

falcons are not making it to stage 3

2025-05-29 20:20

God I hope to see Metiz at least at Stage 2 or the major will be so boring

Really, still BO1 at the Major? fffuuuu Bring back Minor/Major of pre-pandemic, BO3s lets gooooooo

2025-05-29 20:23

eek

2025-05-29 20:24

fuck blast, #ArgentinaAlMundial

6 replies

You're still crying? Give it up already. BESTIA aren't going & they would've got eliminated 0-3 anyways. Probably a good thing they aren't there.

2025-05-29 21:07

5 replies

this is not about what-ifisms. bestia won and deserved to be there. it is as simple as that

2025-05-29 21:24

Yeah. It’s a shame their management fucked it up for them.

2025-05-29 21:25

And their management fucked it up for the team. It's BESTIA's orgs fault for not securing their players VISAS in time. It doesn't matter if they qualified, they still didn't get their VISAS. They could've gotten their VISAS 3 months before the Major Qualifiers even started to ensure making the Major. Instead they waited late, they applied for their VISAS incorrectly & got DENIED. Then they asked for an extension AFTER the deadline date. THEN they lied to everyone saying they had their VISAS on the 21st but date of their VISAS says the 23rd. They lied & deceived A LOT of people. Including you. Get over it.

2025-05-29 23:06

2 replies

Blast could have lied about Bestia mishandling the visas — we’ll never know, since neither side provided any evidence. They set a deadline for May 16, even though that should be in the rules, but they don’t have clear rules themselves. They already had a team ready to replace Bestia, so there was no reason to rush. They didn’t show flexibility when they could have and Blast are partly to blame as well. They could’ve handled the situation with more empathy, like PGL did

2025-05-30 05:21

You're speaking from complete ignorance. Why don't you inform yourself before speaking? Tomaszin and Luchov had already received three or four visa rejections for other tournaments, which is why the process became extremely complicated and they had to ask the Argentine government for help. If BESTIA is based on the rules, there is no deadline for submitting visas. Also based on the history on this issue, there are teams that submitted visas days before the midday start of the major.

2025-05-30 14:35

Please PLEASE don’t have dusT as an analyst PLEASE

2025-05-29 20:32

Lets pray to god we dont get the most annoying *talent* blast usualy pick..

2025-05-29 20:34

Scrawnders casting final confirmed?

2025-05-29 21:03

Hell yeah

2025-05-29 21:14

Its the best choice. Except if the game wasnt hype like in paris. Meh

2025-05-30 00:33

my body is ready for the major W hltv for the in-house Swiss simulator btw

2025-05-29 20:37

no bestia? joke event

2025-05-29 20:39

Let's go Vitality !

added more teams and the prize pool hasn’t changed?

2025-05-29 21:13

bo1 but first team to open a knife during the endless warmup automatically starts 2-0, i think this is more fair.

bo1 LUL bo3 major grandfinal OMEGALUL

2025-05-29 21:28

Can we get a $5 million dollar prize pool? Valve clearly has the money and this would elevate the prestige of the tournament to truly among the greatest among the esports circuits. Maybe even $10 million? Also incentives teams to do well at the majors besides just qualifying to get the sticker money. Right now the $1.25 mil prize pool is only worth 1 Halo World Championship + 1 Halo Major. Halo peaked at less than 100k viewers during its first Major. Tier 2 CS events run over 300k... Current prize pool does not reflect the quality of the CS esports scene.

2025-05-29 21:49

Agree it is time to step up the prize pool, at least to 2.5m at the minimum

2025-05-29 22:44

should be like dota where the money from the pass gets added to the prize pool

2025-05-30 01:36

Even Riot is only putting out 5mil for LoL Worlds (and it was much lower the last few years) and LoL is probably the biggest Esports in the world. Spending 10mil 2x a year on a Major just on prizepool, not including the paid stay for 32 teams, talents, production, rent for the arena etc...that is just not possible,

2025-05-30 03:36

Valve is making hundreds of millions per MONTH on cases dust2.us/news/59889/valve-reportedly-mad.. You can't tell me they don't have enough money

2025-05-30 14:49

why does gaben hate cs2

2025-05-30 22:59

I saw "talent" in the headline and thought oh shit they announced it, how'd I miss it. Welp..

2025-05-29 22:02

I think Stage 3 teams are in little disadvantageous position compared to Stage 2 and Stage 1 teams.

2025-05-29 23:09

Lets go

2025-05-30 01:14

2025-05-30 02:48

Legacy, what a joke

2025-05-30 04:15

1am Cs is too much for us :D . VOD is the best option

2025-05-30 04:31

one word: zews

2025-05-30 10:35

as a korean american major is the worst i will always miss cinema

2025-05-30 13:10

Most asians agree. Im gonna have to get up at 3 on a monday if i wanna watch the gf. Im just gonna hope none of my favorite teams are there, just anothet boring vit vs mouz gf

2025-05-30 13:22