The International 7 champions, Team Liquid and the runner up team, Newbee have been granted the two direct invites for SL i-League Invitational Season 3 Minor - the first minor of the season.
Team Liquid and Newbee will be starting off the new season aiming to stock up on qualifier points for TI8. Only yesterday the two teams were announced to be the headliners for the ESL One Hamburg Major. SL i-League Invitational Season 3 Minor is set to take place at CyberSport Arena in Kiev, October 12-15 with ESL One taking place the following week in Hamburg, Germany. Both events will provide top placing teams with much coveted qualifying points for TI8, although information on the point system has yet to be announced.
Team Liquid is the defending champion of two Starladder events of 2017 - StarSeries Season 3 and a previous season of Invitational. Without any changes going into the new season for both teams, they will be making their re-entry into the competitive season in Kiev as the event is the first of the new Minor/Major system and first LAN of the new year.
SL i-League Invitational Season 3 Minor regional qualifiers
The SEA, CIS, SA and Chinese qualifiers have are already underway. EU and NA qualifiers are set to begin on the 18th of September. The regional qualifiers are held in a double elimination bracket format, best-of-three, including the grand finals. One team from each of the six regions will join Team Liquid and Newbee as they compete for a slice of the $300,000 prize pool.
The entire regional qualifier process for SL i-League Invitational S3 will be broadcast in English by Beyond the Summit, in Russian by SLTV and in Chinese by ImbaTV.