European qualified teams for PGL Antwerp have been confirmed

The biggest region in the CS:GO community provides over 50% of the teams competing in the upcoming Major in Antwerp.

As we inch closer and closer to the first Major of the year, PGL Antwerp, teams showed their fangs in the regionals to remind people that they are with claws and they deserve to be at the top of the standings. Some teams are new, they have yet to sink their fangs into any opponents in a LAN event, but we can still expect them to deliver as we start the first Major tournament for CS:GO in about two weeks’ time.

Europe is still CS:GO’s biggest region in the community. It is so big that they had not one, but two Regional Major Rankings (RMR) events to qualify for PGL Antwerp. With the results, we can see some shift in the narrative overall for CS:GO in Europe.

Qualifying teams

The teams qualifying for PGL Antwerp from Europe, in no particular order, are as follows:

Legends

• Copenhagen Flames
• Cloud9 (formerly known as Players, also was known as Gambit Esports)
• Heroic
• BIG
• FaZe Clan
• Natus Vincere

Challengers

• forZe
• Team Vitality
• ENCE
• G2 Esports
• Astralis
• Bad News Eagles
• Team Spirit

Contender

• Eternal Fire
• Outsiders (formerly known as Virtus.pro)

The narrative has changed

From the list above, we can see that the top names are still reigning at the top of the leaderboard. Names like Natus Vincere, FaZe Clan and BIG reign supreme. These teams are still dominating the charts, but unlike last year, Natus Vincere is not at their best for PGL Antwerp and ended up at the bottom of the pack during RMR A. The top dog is instead Heroic, who was last seen settling for 9th place at the recent ESL Pro League XV tournament.

Another name that is gaining back notoriety is FaZe Clan after their less than stellar showing in 2021. They won three big events back-to-back since the start of the year – winning BLAST Premier: Spring Group, IEM Katowice and also ESL Pro League XV. We hope their winning momentum will be carried by the team to the end of PGL Antwerp.

Special mention goes to Astralis and ForZe as these two teams had struggled to be at the top of the leaderboard last year, and PGL Antwerp may just be their ticket to stardom once again – if they can make their way out of the Contender stage later at Antwerp. ForZe is also the only Russian team actively competing in a major tournament, so we will have to see if there will be any blowback from the fans and the community at large on the team’s decision to stick as a Russian team instead of declaring themselves with a neutral name.

Cloud9 and Outsiders should also be noticed. The former has recently rejoined the CS:GO fraternity when they picked up the Players roster, formerly known as Gambit Esports. It is their first time in professional CS:GO in over a year, and their first jaunt as a brand in Europe. Outsiders are still going as a neutral named team due to the current war happening in Ukraine - they are the team formerly known as Virtus.pro. 

PGL Antwerp Major 

PGL Antwerp Major is the first Major of the year for CS:GO, with a prize pool of $1,000,000 and is scheduled to take place between  May 9 and 22  in Antwerp, Belgium. The 24 teams will be competing for the lion’s share of the prize pool and also Tournament Circuit points for BLAST and ESL

Like previous Majors, the tournament will be split into three stages - Contenders, Legends and Champions stage. The first two stages are group stages, and the last is a knockout stage where only eight teams will be competing with each other to reach the grand final round.