We have reached the final offline stage of the first season of the $1,000,000 2015 ESL ESEA Pro League challenge. After more than seven weeks of world class action from the twelfth best teams of each European and North American continent, we are now moving to Cologne for the final challenge.

Total of eight teams, the top four from each continent, will take on each other during the next four days for the massive prize purse of $250,000. Remember that another piece of $250,000 were given out to all participants during the seven week regular season stage, making that $500,000 in total and moreover taking ESL and ESEA one step further over Valve's traditional majors.

In less than a half of a hour, the biggest CS:GO tournament to date will kick off live from the ESL state-of-art esport arena in Cologne, Germany. The final stage of the competition will run from 2nd to 5th of July.

The following eight teams managed to secure the chance to add the first ever season of the ESL ESEA Pro League to their trophy cabinet:


Unlike most tournaments and leagues out there, the ESL ESEA Pro League will use a custom format. The eight teams will be divined in to two groups according to their recent success in the regular season stage of the competition. The group stage will be set to best-of-one GSL format, with the top three teams going forward to the playoffs.

The top team of each group will directly move to the semi-final, while the other will have to make their way through the quarter-final. The playoffs will run on single elimination best-of-three format, with only the grand final extended to best-of-five maps.

The schedule for the ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1 CS:GO World Championship is the following:


Alongside with the world class competition, three showmatches are promised to appear during the last three days. There is no information on what to expect from them, but considering that the two of the world's best tournament organizers, known not only in the Counter-Strike sphere, but in the global electronic sports scene as well, are involved, we are definitely going to witness something interesting.

Of course, ESL TV will be online with an official English stream live from Cologne with the following large number of experts responsible for your viewing experience:


ESL TV will also have streams in German, Polish, French, Chinese and Spanish language. As usual, community streams in various other languages will be available too.

The prize pool will be distrusted as the following:




Stay tuned to SK Gaming as we will provide additional news and as well as match status updates from the tournament in Cologne.

Source: HLTV.org