im trying to get into cs esports but theres so many events
so is katowice and cologne a yearly event?
and theres 2 majors a year but which events are considered majors?
and how much do people care about those pg iem and blast events that arent majors are they like vct masters?
so iem blast and pgl are tournament organizers and they organize multiple international events per year even if they arent majors?
https://www.hltv.org/events
Anything that says "Major" on it is equivalent to a masters/champs. The next two largest tournaments are "IEM Katowice" and "IEM Cologne", you can think of those as 2nd in importance only behinds Majors just due to them being massive arenas, held every year since the game came out, and generally has the most prestige even if it's not the most money or a Major. Then there are tournaments where there isn't prestige, but money. This year that includes: PGL Events, Fissure 2025 Finals, Esports World Cup, Thunderpick World Championship. The rest are kinda like if Valorant's main competition was if we had International Minors, still a trophy and important but not a Major and not a ton of money. ESL Pro League is like Valorant's normal League Season just international and twice a year, and every other tournament is just for points to qualify for majors, whether large or small. This includes any BLAST or IEM events that are not the ones I've already listed.
tl;dr
Ranked in importance:
Anything that says "Major" = masters/champs, all top teams
IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne = not majors but massive arenas, held every year since release, most prestige only behind majors, most top teams
PGL Events, Fissure 2025 Finals, Esports World Cup, Thunderpick World Championship = money farming events, decent amount of top teams
Everything else in a big box on events page = Fun to watch, not very important but some top teams
Everything else = t3-t4 not recommended, level of play is low
The CS circuit is organized by multiple TOs like ESL (ESL One, Pro league, IEM), PGL and BLAST.
Majors have the highest prestige because they are Valve sponsored events unlike the others. Which TO holds a major really depedns every year. There have been ESL Major, PGL Major, BLAST Major, Starladder Major, and so forth in different years.
As for IEM, there are multiple different IEMs of differing importance held every year, kind of like an IEM tour, and the top of the IEM ladder is Katowice. Cologne comes in close but historically, IEM Katowice holds the greates prestige.
Different TOs organize the yearly calendar in such way that there are minimal overlap between the big LANs,especially those by the important 4 TOs, but some of the events do overlap a bit.
what about tournaments like iem rio, iem dallas, thunderpick world championship, yalla compass, pgl cluj napoca, pgl bucharest, the upcoming iem melbourne, blast bounty, blast premier world final etc...
so these arent majors or katowice or cologne but they seem to still be in big arenas and have massive prize pools and viewerships so are they still massive important events? like equal to a vct masters or smt? or winning a regional split?
Yes they are important but quantifying them in val terms is tricky to some extent
Esl pro tour is all esl/Iem events… they get broken into the s tier (any major they organise, Kato’s and Köln’s), a tier (pro league, Dallas, Rio’s, Sydney’s), below that the events matter but if you are an already established t1 team u are less likely to care except you need practice or to fill a slot in ur calendar and now for points
iem/esl have a grand slam and to qualify for that prize when u win any of their events u need to win 3 from the next 9 or 4 out of ten and one of Theo’s 4 has to be a Katowice or Köln
Thunderpick, yalla are smaller TOs but with how the cs landscape has shifted cuz of the new vrs system they are just as important
PGL in theory have the resources o be up there with blast and esl but they lost out due to the partnership leagues stuff and they took a step back and are returning to full time CS to’ing this year…
there are always gonna be a lot of events in cs, but imo these are the ones that hold the most prestige and if you wanna begin watching cs esports, these are good starting points
any major
iem katowice & cologne
blast spring / fall / world final
esl pro league
some other fun ones that are not as important but worth watching are things like yalla compass, betboom dacha, iem events outside of kato + cologne, etc
majors hold the most importance here, the next one is in austin, texas, usa with blast as the organizer
for example if you win a random IEM or PGL event, they do matter and they hold some weight in hltv's yearly top 20 rankings (https://www.hltv.org/news/40608/top-20-players-of-2024-final-list) but 5 years from now on its not like anyone is gonna remember who won some random IEM Dallas event, but people will remember majors, cologne and katowice winners
CS Majors = valve sanctioned events, for which stickers are given, hosted at the end of every season (Which lasts 6 months), TO and Place is chosen by valve.
IEM Cologne and Katowice = staples of the circuit, been there for as long as CS GO and now CS2 exists, kinda like Monaco GP for F1, or British GP for that matter.
Blast events, PGL, other ESL events = S-tier events, but not as prestigious, regularly change their place, just there as SPlits you can say
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