The tournament will take place in early May.
The official schedule for IEM Sydney was announced this morning and features eight teams, including SK, FaZe Clan and Astralis.
The first two days will consist of best-of-one matches to determine who will move on to the best-of-three semifinals. Once the winners of those have been determined, the best-of-five Grand Final will take place on Sunday, May 7.
The first two days will be online matches while the semifinals and Grand Final will take place in Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia.
The tournament schedule for the first day is as follows:
Day 1 - Wednesday, May 1 (BO1)
- 05:00 North vs. OpTic
- 06:10 SK vs. ViCi
- 07:20 Astralis vs. Chiefs
- 08:30 FaZe vs. Renegades
- 09:40 Second Round, Match 1 (Teams TBA)
- 10:50 Second Round, Match 2 (Teams TBA)
- 12:00 Second Round, Match 3 (Teams TBA)
- 13:10 Second Round, Match 4 (Teams TBA)
North has consistently gotten in the 7-8 place range in recent tournaments, most recently having fallen to HellRaisers in StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 3 earlier this month. Meanwhile, OpTic Gaming has had success in the more recent past, having managed to get second place in Esports Championship Series Season 2.
The current top three teams in the world - SK, Astralis and FaZe - will face off against one another in future rounds, but will first be challenged by Chinese team ViCi and Australian teams Chiefs and Renegades, respectively. ViCi are the newcomers to the big scene, having only been in a handful of tournaments before this, while home-team Chiefs have had success in a few Minors and Majors over the past few months. Renegades are the most experienced challengers to the Top Three, having recently taken second place at DreamHack Winter 2016.
However, with the behemoths that are SK, Astralis and FaZe in their way, the underdogs will have a lot of ground to cover if they want to make it to the Grand Finals.
Image courtesy of IEM
