PGL announced its Counter-Strike 2 tournament schedule on Aug. 27, but it apparently lacks open qualifiers, which is dividing the community.
After the schedule was announced on PGL’s X account (formerly Twitter), Complexity’s CS2 general manager Graham Pitt reposted it with additional information. According to Pitt, there won’t be open qualifiers for any of the PGL events “due to a very busy event schedule.” The tweet landed on Reddit shortly after, where players discussed the adjustment in an Aug. 27 thread. Some fans believe it goes against the way the open circuit is supposed to be, while others aren’t surprised at all.
With the lack of open qualifiers, the teams invited to PGL’s invited will likely be chosen based on Valve’s rankings. The majority of the points in these rankings will be allocated depending on teams’ results in tournaments, including PGL’s circuit. Some fans fear the scene will remain stale as a result.
“It basically makes it impossible to qualify to any of the big events as a small t2 team. You’d have to completely dominate the region for an extended period of time and have one of the t1 teams bomb out in last place multiple times in order to get invited,” another fan added.
Others believe having open qualifiers for each tournament would consume too much time and effort to be affordable. They also think the best tier two teams will have to grind to make their way into tier one to earn invites. “The whole CS circuit will be your open qualifier. Work your way up to tier 1 and fight for your ranking,” one fan wrote.
Pitt seconded the opinion. “Firstly, not criticizing PGL for this. The calendar is crazy next year and running quals would be a nightmare task. Secondly, the key change obviously is that all invites are done on merit next year. That’s great,” he wrote. However, he thinks the scene will continue “to have the same teams playing events when they’re all so invite heavy.”
From 2025 onward, CS2 will have no partnership leagues, with organizers forced by Valve to switch to a ranking-based circuit. While seeing PGL resign from open qualifiers may be worrying for tier two and three teams, there are still plenty of other organizers in the scene who might have a different approach to their events.
