Photo courtesy of ESL
ESL One Birmingham is getting ready to unleash a major event next week, marking one of the last chances for teams to gain DPC points for the season. The groups have been drawn and the stakes have been set high with an unforgiving format.
Evil Geniuses and fnatic will take center stage to kick things off at ESL One Birmingham Major. Both teams are on the cusp of breaking into the top 8 of the DPC —the sweet spot for the highly coveted TI8 direct invite. For Fnatic, this will be their last appearance and knocking the North American giants out would be a much-needed boost in the security of any points they may gain.
The 12 team tournament has a prize pool of 1$ Million and 1500 Pro Circuit points and is scheduled to begin on the 23rd of May. As the second to last Major of the Pro Circuit 2017-2018 season, the tension is sure to be at an all-time high and the matches filled with some gut-deep churn of emotions and thrills.
ESL One Birmingham Teams
Participating teams:
 Vici Gaming |  Virtus.pro |
 Team Liquid | Newbee |
 Mineski | OG |
| TBD | LGD.Forever Young |
 fnatic |  OpTic Gaming |
 paiN Gaming | Evil Geniuses |
ESL One Birmingham Groups
ESL One Birmingham Format
- Group Stage
- The group stage will be played on May 23rd and 24th
- All games are played backstage
- Three GSL groups of four teams each
- Bottom two teams from each group are eliminated, Runner-ups advance to the quarterfinals
- The three first-place teams play additional Bo1 matches against each other to determine which two teams advance to the semi-finals and which team joins the three runner-ups in the quarter-finals
- Playoffs
- The playoffs will be held between May 25th and the 27th in front of a live audience in the Arena Birmingham
- Single Elimination
- All games will be Bo3
- Bo5 Grand Finals
- A 3rd place decider match will be played on the last day of the tournament before the Grand Finals
