Following the removal of open and closed qualifiers for the Perfect World Shanghai Major in 2024, future Counter-Strike 2 majors are set to be expanded to 32 teams. There will be no more qualifiers at all.
According to HLTV, some massive changes to Counter-Strike's most prestigious events are looming. The current format of 24 teams in a 3-stage-system is set to be expanded by a further 8 teams and a fourth stage.
CS2 Majors are set to be expanded to 32 teams!
Since 2018, 16 teams would start in the then so-called "Challenger stage", with the top 8 Swiss system teams advancing to the "Legends stage", where they would meet the 8 legends teams in another Swiss format.
The top 8 teams then made the playoffs and crowned the winning side in a classic knockout system. This system is set to remain, with the fourth stage being Swiss as well.
Former Astralis rifler Lucas "Bubzkji" Andersen shared his thoughts on the changes:
Good change
— Bubzkji (@Bubzkji) October 15, 2024
Should help a lot of Tier 2-4 teams to survive, and actually have a better chance of running the organization longterm.
I assume this will also split the revenue share into more pieces, meaning the Top Teams will earn a tad less than before? Iknow the impact of... https://t.co/zC6Tox6yig
The first affected event will be the BLAST.TV Austin major in June 2025.
No more RMRs, invitations based on Valve's team ranking
The RMR tournaments will be gone entirely in 2025. They were introduced in the biggest change to Major qualification to date, following the Covid pandemic in 2021.
Further Major tournaments will be filled up by the regional Valve rankings, a procedure that is in place currently for the RMR's.
This change could end up having massive implications, on how many lower tier teams have an actual shot of making it through to the major.
This is good no? I like a change.. more stickers too for sticker lovers. https://t.co/uu6iLNKAHR
— Thour CS2 (@ThourCS2) October 15, 2024
This change has many detractors:
Very cool. Major was 16 teams for the first 4 years, then moved to 24 teams since 2018.
— neL (@neLendirekt) October 15, 2024
So seeing how the scene evolves and to help some regions even more, it's great to have more teams, 32 is great.
Not a huge fan of the ranking based invites tho, but yeah. https://t.co/v49u9BZhQw
It is going to be fascinating to see how those apparent changes will shake out eventually.
For now, Counter-Strike fans do not have to wait that much longer for the second major of 2024. The Shanghai Major is set to start in less than two months!
What do you think about those changes? Will another 8 teams improve the playing field? Or does this in fact just mean more sticker money for Valve?