DreamHack has released the information for its first tournament in 2021. With a prize of $100,000 split between North America & Europe areas.
The organiser posted the details to their website, which also confirms the contest will be part of the ESL Pro Tour, and competing teams will earn standings for the Pro Tour.
The contest will be played online, with four teams from North America, two invited teams and another two qualifying through previous events. In Europe however, 8 teams will compete, 5 of which invited based on their ESL world ranking at the time, two from qualifiers, the final contender will be the winner of the German ESL championship.
Given there's only four teams competing in the NA area. To accomodate this, there will be a different format - a double elimination best of 3 bracket. In Europe the normal DreamHack format will remain, with the 8 teams starting with group stages, and then moving to the playoffs, which will be single-elimination matches.
Here are the dates for the contest as announced, including qualifiers in the run up to the main tournament.
Qualifiers;
January 20th & 21st are the two open qualifiers
A follow up qualifier, the closed one, occurs on January 22nd & 23rd
The main tournament will take place at the end of the month, on the 27th to 31st.
As announced, teams will earn points towards the ESL Pro Tour, which means points they earn here will help them on their path towards events such as ESL One Cologne, scheduled to occur in July, 2021. The last two Dreamhack January events occured in Leipzig, last year won by BIG. However, due to the nature of the event now being online, without any live audiences, this'll be the first time since 2018 its not occured there. With the pandemic still gripping the world, and several European countries handling large resurgences, it seems there's no end in sight to the European online era, and a return to live audiences in the next 2-3 month.
If you have a team, and you'd like to sign up, or just for further information, you can do so on the DreamHack website, here.
