ESL One: Road to Rio - Schedule, Prize Pool, Format, and How-To Watch

Due to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, the first Major of the year, ESL One Rio, couldn’t take place in May.

Valve has replaced the event with online Regional Major Ranking tournaments (RMR), which will award points, which will decide who will qualify for the M ESL One Rio Major set to go ahead in November.

The Spring leg of RMR will be organized by ESL across six regions: Europe, CIS, North America, South America, Oceania, and Asia. 

Which teams are playing?

The tournament will feature teams that had spots at the ESL One Rio Major in May or the Minors. Astralis, Vitality, and ENCE are among the participants as they were in the Legends Stage of the StarLadder Major.

G2, mousesports, FaZe, North, and c0ntact also earned their spot from the StarLadder Major. The aforementioned teams will be joined by eight Minor contestants: Fnatic, NiP, GODSENT, Complexity, Heretics, Movistar Riders, Dignitas, and Copenhagen Flames.

Format

All regions will play a round-robin group stage, followed by playoffs and culminating in a Grand Final.

All teams will play each other once in a best-of-three series. ESL hasn’t revealed how many teams will advance to the playoffs yet. But we do know that all playoff games will be best-of-threes.

Schedule

ESL One: Road to Rio - Europe will kick off next week, on April 22, running until May 17. 

Europe: April 22
Asia: April 22 
South America: April 22
North America: April 22
Oceania: April 23
CIS: April 30

Prize Pool

ESL One: Road to Rio Europe: How-To Watch

The action will be broadcast live on ESL’s Twitch and YouTube channels dedicated to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.