ESL Katowice match-ups revealed

ESL have revealed the first match-ups that will be played at this year’s IEM Katowice.

IEM Katowice is slated to get underway in two weeks, running from February 24 to March 1, when 16 teams will descend upon the eponymous Polish city to fight for the lion’s share of a $500,000 prize pool and to earn the title of first-ever ESL Pro Tour Masters Championship winners.

The 16 teams have been divided into two eight-team groups that will play a best-of-three double-elimination bracket that will see the winners go to the semi-finals and the second and third-placed teams from each group go to the quarter-finals as the high and low seeds, respectively.

Group A

Astralis

FaZe

Natus Vincere

fnatic

Vitality

Cloud9

NiP

Renegades

Group B

Liquid

mousesports

Evil Geniuses

100 Thieves

MAD Lions

Virtus.pro

ViCi

Group A will be headlined by the best team in the world, Astralis, who will want to bounce back after back-to-back best-of-three losses to Complexity and Natus Vincere during group play at BLAST Premier Spring Series. The group will feature the aforementioned CIS team as well as a FaZe, who kicked off 2020 with three clean 2-0 victories over NiP and Liquid, the later losing twice, in their group stage at the RFRSH event in London.

Group B, on the other hand, will have three top 5 teams in Liquid, mousesports and Evil Geniuses, backed by a strong pack comprised of 100 Thieves, G2, MAD Lions and a struggling Virtus.pro that will be trying to sneak their way into the playoffs.

The first set of matches will be:
Monday, February 24th

Tuesday, February 25th

19:00 – Liquid vs. Virtus.pro
19:00 – MAD Lions vs. Evil Geniuses

We'll be kicking off the #IEM Katowice 2020 Group Stage with these series!

What are your predictions? 🤔https://t.co/f11vChzlod pic.twitter.com/l0h7rD7zBE

— Intel®ExtremeMasters (@IEM) February 10, 2020