Astralis Refuse ESL One Cologne for Krakow Major

Astralis, the Danish superstars who currently hold 1st place on HLTV’s world rankings, have announced their intention to not attend ESL One Cologne.

In a Twitter post, the team defended their decision by stating their intention to defend their Major title at the upcoming PGL Major Krakow. This is a very sound decision given that the Major has a $1,000,000 when compared to Cologne’s $250,000.

To all the fans asking about our participation in the ESL One Cologne event. pic.twitter.com/rVhJeDMrTU

— Astralis (@astralisgg) April 3, 2017

Despite SK, Virtus.Pro and FaZe stating that they will attend the Cologne event, it would not be uncommon to see more teams choosing to not attend the July 7-9 event to practice for the Major like Astralis which starts just a week later.

This is PGL’s first Major event in CS:GO, having collaborated with Valve on numerous Dota 2 Majors. The Major will take place from July 16-23 and will feature four Minor events in Asia, Americas, CIS and Europe from June 1-July 23. Eight teams will battle it out in each Minor for a share of $50,000 with the best two from each will go to the next phase.

There, these eight teams will fight against the lower eight teams from the Atlanta Major for four days. Four of the eight teams will get to participate at the major as “Major Challengers.” These Challengers will fight against the top 8 teams from the last Major, dubbed “Legends”, at the Krakow Major.

It will be interesting to see if any of the Challengers will create any upsets against the Legends, much like when Vega Squadron defeated Ninjas in Pyjamas and eliminated them from the Main Qualifier of the ELEAGUE Major.