IEM Katowice 2025 is scheduled to take place between January 29 – February 9. As always, this prestigious CS2 tournament will feature most of the world’s best teams, 24 of them in total.
The prize pool is $1 million and the format is unforgiving. But that’s exactly what makes IEM Katowice such a fun event to watch.
Participants And Format
Here are the 24 teams that will compete in the tournament:
- G2 Esports
- Team Spirit
- The MongolZ
- Team Vitality
- FaZe Clan
- MOUZ
- Natus Vincere
- Team Falcons
- Team Liquid
- FURIA Esports
- PaiN Gaming
- MIBR
- 3DMAX
- Eternal Fire
- GamerLegion
- Complexity
- SAW
- BIG
- FlyQuest
- Astralis
- Wildcard
- Virtus.pro
- Imperial Female
- HEROIC
The top eight teams on this list will start the tournament in the group stage. The other 16 will need to survive the play-in stage. Each of these 16 teams will play a minimum of two and a maximum of three matches and must win at least twice to advance.
The group stage format is much tougher despite having an upper bracket and a lower bracket. In each group, eight teams will compete for just three available playoffs spots. The winner goes directly to the semifinals. The win a group, a team must win three consecutive matches.
The match format will be best-of-three. Only the Grand Final is best-of-five.
The winner of IEM Katowice 2025 will receive $400.000. The runner-up gets $180.000. The bottom four teams receive $2500 each.
Favorites
Based on the recent results from BLAST Bounty Spring, it’s clear that Team Spirit, Natus Vincere, G2 Esports, Eternal Fire, Team Vitality, and a handful of other teams are in great shape right now.
It remains to be seen if there’s any competitor that can dethrone Spirit. Last year, they won the tournament in spectacular fashion, with Danil “donk” Kryshkovets having one of the best individual performances in the history of Counter-Strike.
