The organizers of one of the most important cybersport tournaments IEM Katowice announced the initial positioning of the teams in the tournament grid. A total of sixteen cybersport teams will take part in the competition, which will compete for the final in double-elimination format.
The first stage of IEM Katowice will begin on February 16. Eight matches will be played on the first day, with three slots: three matches will be played at noon, three more at 3:30 p.m. local time, and the remaining two – at 5 p.m. All of them will involve drawing three cards. The second wave of qualifying matches will take place on February 17. According to its results, eight teams will find themselves in the quarterfinals.
The opening matches will feature such teams as Spirit, Gambit, Liquid, NIP, fnatic and others. Interestingly, a few weeks before the tournament, the lineup of teams changed: NIP, TeamOne and Wisla Krakow were invited as replacements for TYLOO, Chaos and Illuminar, who could not make it to the tournament due to restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the fact that the above mentioned teams have taken higher positions in qualification, however, due to the fact that the epidemic situation remains difficult, they had to be replaced by the teams following them in the ranking.