European First Strike qualifiers to kick off in November

Published on October 7th, 2020. Edited on October 22nd, 2020 at 5:10 PM CEST

Since the announcement of First Strike towards the end of September, we’ve slowly gotten information on how the event will be run in each region. South Korea and Brazil each have shared their structures, but today we’ve gotten the biggest announcement yet as Riot Games has revealed the format of Europe’s First Strike event with the $100,000 (€85,000) prize pool.

The event kicks off with the Open Qualifiers, which begin on November 9th, 2020, and run through to November 22nd. First, there will be two completely open qualifiers, the first from November 9th-10th and the second from November 11th-12th. Any team can compete, regardless of whether or not they already participated in an earlier qualifier. The top 16 teams from each advance to the Play-In stage on November 13th, which narrows the field down to 8 teams. These final 8 advance to the best-of-3 playoff stage from the 14th to the 15th, which determines the 4 teams that will move on to the First Strike Regional Finals. This process will then repeat for the next week, meaning that ultimately 8 participants for First Strike will be decided.

As far as we know, the only requirements to take part in the open qualifiers are that players are over 16 years old and at least Immortal 1. According to Riot, “The full rules and policies will be released in the next few weeks.” There is no information yet on the process for registration, but that too will presumably be revealed in the next several weeks.

The main First Strike event will take place from December 3rd-6th. The event will be best-of-3 single elimination, until the finals which will be best-of-5. The quarter finals will take place from December 3rd-4th, the semifinals on the 5th, and the Grand Final on the 6th.

Do you think you have what it takes to take down G2 Esports and fight amongst the best in Europe? Get your team together and start practicing - First Strike kicks off soon. The registration will be open on October 26th, 2020 (Monday), at 9:00 AM CEST!