ESL Pro League Season 18 Schedule, Groups, Format, Where To Watch

ESL Pro League Season 18 is here as one of the last significant CS: GO Tier 1 competitions on the calendar. The event comes just in time before the much-anticipated release of CS2. A total of 32 teams are flying in from around the world to St. Julians, Malta, to compete for the $850,000 prize pool and a chance to qualify for the BLAST Premier World Final 2023. With Faze being there as the defending champions, the stakes are higher as this would be the last major CS: GO event for now, and the team who wins this would steal the final few thunders of CS: GO.

Also read: TSM Announces CS Roster Ahead Of CS2 Release
 

ESL Pro League Season 18 Schedule, Groups, Format, And Where To Watch

The participating teams are divided into four triple-elimination groups with only the top four from each group advancing to the single-elimination playoffs. Group stage winners advance to the Quarterfinals and group stage runners-up advance to the Round of 12 as the High Seeds. The group stage third-place teams go to the Round of 16 as the Low Seeds. Except for the grand finals, which will be a best-of-five series, all of the ESL Pro League Season 18 matchups will be best-of-threes. The groups are as follows:

Group A

• Team Vitality
• ORKS
• Astralis
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• FURIA
• Movistar Riders
• Grayhound
• GamerLegion

Group B

• Heroic
• Rooster
• BIG
• Monte
• MOUZ
• MIBR
• Evil Geniuses
• ENCE

Group C

• FaZe Clan
• 9z Team
• Imperial
• Fnatic
• Apeks
• M80
• 5yclone
• NAVI

Group D

• Cloud9
• Eternal Fire
• Complexity
• 9INE
• Team Liquid
• Virtus.pro
• Lynn Vision
• G2

The prize pool of $850,000 USD will be distributed as follows: $200,000 will be awarded to the winning team, followed by $90,000 USD to the runners-up and $50,000 USD to the second runners-up. The opening matches start on August 30, 2023, and the Grand Finals will take place on October 1, 2023. CS enthusiasts can catch the livestreams of the matches on both Twitch and YouTube.