BLAST Premier Spring Showdown: Teams, Schedule, Format, & How-To Watch

Showdown events are the second stage of the BLAST Premier circuit which kicked off in January with the regular season. Six teams have already advanced to the Spring Finals and Showdown contests will give out six more spots.

This event was originally planned to take place on LAN, in Moscow, Russia, but the tournament organizers had to divide the competition into two regions and play it out online due to the COVID-19 breakout.

(Picture: Blast)

The event kicks off on Sunday, 31st May at 14:30 CEST - here is everything you need to know ahead of the tournament.

Teams

Europe

Three of the top five teams in the HLTV World Ranking, Astralis, Fnatic, and mousesports, will take part in the European competition. They will be accompanied by three invited and four qualified teams.

• Astralis
• Fnatic
• mousesports
• Vitality
• NiP
• MAD Lions
• ENCE
• Dignitas
• RTP Arena Cup winner
• CIS Cup winner

North America

Almost all the heavy-hitters in the North American region will be participating in BLAST Premier Spring, except Liquid who have already qualified to the Spring Finals. Evil Geniuses, MIBR, 100 Thieves and Cloud9 are among the participants.

• Evil Geniuses
• MIBR
• Cloud9
• 100 Thieves
• Gen.G
• FURIA
• Chaos
• Triumph

Format

Teams in both regions will be divided into two round-robin, best-of-one groups. The last team in each group will be eliminated, with the other squads moving on to the best-of-three playoffs. 

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To earn a place in the Spring Finals, the teams will have to get a top-three finish in both regions. Playoffs will feature a third-place decider match to determine the squad that will claim the final ticket to the Spring Finals.

Schedule & How-To Watch

Games on both regions will kick off on May 31, running until June 7. Matches will be streamed live on BLAST Premier’s Twitch and YouTube channels, with European games starting on 14:30 CEST (13:30 BST, 08:30 am ET) and North American matches going ahead on 20:30 CEST (19:30 BST, 14:30 ET).