PGL release further details on their 2025 and 2026 tournament calendar
One of the biggest changes coming to Counter-Strike in 2025 is that tournament organisers such as PGL and StarLadder will begin to host tournaments again.
Int he past few years, PGL has only hosted Majors, such as the first CS2 Major in Copenhagen, but now they will be running regular events throughout the season with a massive tournament calendar.
Today, PGL have released more information about those tournaments, so we thought we'd go through those details with you.
Playoff structure
The big selling point of PGL's announcement is that they will be hosting one-of-a-kind playoff weekends in 2025 and 2026.
In the past few years, Counter-Strike has seen six-team playoff weekends become the norm, however, PGL's circuit will see a return to more traditional eight-team playoffs.
Although, this doesn't mean that their tournaments will be four-day weekends. Instead, PGL will be hosting four quarter-finals on a Friday, with the two semi-finals being played on Saturday and the grand final on Sunday.
They also announced that the semi-final day will feature a showmatch, while the Sunday will also have a third place decider match played before a BO5 final.
Photo: Michal KonkolLocations and dates
Another big part of the announcement was an updated tournament calendar, which as seen a big change to their original calendar.
Previously, there was an event scheduled to be played in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but that has now been replaced by Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
The dates and locations for the PGL 2025 tournament calendar are as follows:
- PGL Cluj Napoca 2025 - February 14-23
- PGL Bucharest 2025 - April 6-13
- PGL Astana 2025 - May 10-18
- PGL Belgrade 2025 - October 25-November 2
PGL also state that they will be running the English broadcast for the Perfect World CAC 2025, which will take place between October 1st-13th, 2025.
They then revealed dates and most of the locations for an even bigger 2026 calendar, which are as follows:
- PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026 - February 11-22
- PGL Bucharest 2026 - April 2-12
- PGL Astana 2026 - May 7-17
- PGL TBD (location announcement soon) - August 6-16
- 2026.PGL TBD (location announcement soon) - October 1-11
- 2026.PGL Belgrade 2026 - October 22-November 1
Photo: Michal KonkolPrizepool breakdown
Finally, PGL also gave further details on the prize pool for each of their events.
Each event is set to have a $1,250,000 prize pool, with $400,000 of that going to the winning team.
The full breakdown is as follows:
- 1st: $400,000
- 2nd: $187,500
- 3rd: $150,000
- 4th: $87,500
- 5th-8th: $62,500
- 9th-11th: $31,250
- 12th-14th: $18,750
- 15th-16th: $12,500