With the Marvel Rivals Invitational now underway and the Marvel Rivals Championship fast approaching, many big esports organisations have scrambled to sign teams for the newly formed esport.

After a late 2024 release, NetEase’s Marvel-themed hero shooter has become one of the top FPS games in the world. It reached over 40m players in the last three months, proving its popularity. Marvel Rivals Invitational is the first official tournament for the game and the competitive community is curious how it will do as an esport.

There are four regions competing in the Marvel Rivals Invitational, each with its own tournament. The EMEA region is up next, running from February 28th to March 9th. A recent tweet showed the eight participating teams, including some popular esports organisations.

On February 26th, Fnatic teased the esports community with a photo of The Thing wearing a Fnatic jersey, but nothing was confirmed. It only made sense that it would give Marvel Rivals a shot since Fnatic also had a team competing in the Overwatch Champions Series.

A day later, Fnatic revealed its roster:

Luminosity has gone all-in on Marvel Rivals esports. The organisation has predicted that the game will have a massive casual and competitive scene for years to come, prompting them to sign two teams.

Here is its EMEA roster:

OG is known for its prominent teams in Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. As such, it’s interesting to see the team step into an esport that isn’t as established. But the organisation is calling it ‘inevitable’ that it would compete.

Here is the roster, with players from all over Europe:

Virtus.pro announced its Marvel Rivals team earlier in February, with a roster made up of former Overwatch competitors. Originally called TeamCats, the squad has expressed excitement at joining the Marvel Rivals esports scene under Virtus.pro.

Here is the new team:

After a few teases, Sentinels has officially announced that it has a Marvel Rivals team, although the roster is still unknown. CEO Rob Moore stated that he sees ‘tremendous potential’ in the esports scene and they are signing ’emerging talent.’

It’s also unclear if the team will include involvement from FPS streamer Michael ‘shroud‘ Grzesiek. He previously told fans that a Marvel Rivals team he discussed was confirmed to be happening.

Luminosity’s second Marvel Rivals team is going to be competing in the NA region. Here’s the signed team:

Usually focused on Call of Duty, this popular American organisation has decided to join the Marvel Rivals scene as NetEase announces a focus on esports. Check out the roster:

Australian organisation FURY Esports recently placed third in the Oceana Invitational, showing that its new roster has promise in the Marvel Rivals scene. It’s no surprise to see FURY enter the scene early as the organisation is also competing in Pokemon, another emerging scene.

The roster is as follows:

This is another Australian esports organisation that jumped into Marvel Rivals early on. Kanga emerged as the OCE champion in the Invitational. It currently has the largest Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster in Australia as well.

Here is the Marvel Rivals team:

Marvel Rivals is the success story that the industry of live service games was searching for, but breaching into the esports crowd is a different matter entirely.

Analysing the game’s success in the world of free-to-play titles is relatively simple — one look at Steam Charts and the numbers speak for themselves: in a little over three months of existence, the game already has peaked at more than 600,000 concurrent players and has an average of more than 200,000 people playing at any given moment just on PC.

The reason for this success is taking popular characters from a multi-billion dollar franchise and dropping them into a fast-paced multiplayer shooter. And while the game is quite similar to Overwatch 2, it has solidified itself in the hero shooter space thanks to its responsive developer team and frequent updates. But while these are qualities of a good casual game, will it carry into a successful esports scene?

The popularity of the Marvel Rivals benefited a lot from a downward period (now possibly over with the latest revamp) of the Overwatch 2 ecosystem both on the casual and competitive front. Many disgruntled players, content creators and professionals made the jump from one hero shooter to the other to take advantage of the popularity of the latest release.

As a result, the nascent competitive ecosystem of Marvel Rivals is almost entirely composed of former Overwatch pros, in a very similar fashion to the early days of VALORANT, where the entirety of the top players’ crowd was made by former Counter-Strike professionals.

That’s the exact road the Armenia-based Russian organisation Virtus Pro went for its debut in the nascent competitive scene: its newly signed Marvel Rivals roster is composed of William ‘SparkR’ Andersson, Philip ‘phi’ Handke, Mikkel ‘Sypeh’ Klein, Arthur ‘dridro’ Szanto and Andreas ‘Nevix’ Karlsson, all former Overwatch 2 pros that used to compete as part of TeamCats. 

What granted them the spot in the organisation is their victory at the very first EU Marvel Rivals Championship, called Season 0, that’s now about to come back with Season 1 and a multi-region and multi-input competition. Starting on March 8th, teams will compete in the Marvel Rivals Championship Season 1 divided between China PC, North America PC, North America Console, Europe PC, Europe Console, Asia PC and Asia Console regions, each one having a prize pool of $14,500 (~£11,600).

With the esports scene heating up, Sentinels and other top esports organisations have followed suit, announcing teams for the Invitationals, which featured region-based tournaments late 2024 to early March. The most-watched Invitational was North America, with an okay 18,000 peak viewers.

So the interest in the game from the industry and the players is there, but is it going to be enough for the rise of a sustainable ecosystem? As things stand right now, the answer leans more on the no than on the yes side, mainly because of what the roadmap is for the NetEase shooter.

First of all, Marvel Rivals launched with 33 heroes, a massive amount for a hero shooter, with four more (the Fantastic Four) having made their debut in the first season alone. This is not just a launch period bonanza: adding at least two heroes every two to three months is the developer’s plan to keep interest and player population high.

The problem with this strategy, and the main complaint of the playerbase, is that heroes feel samey in the way they look, but especially in the way they play. A lot of shooting and cooldown abilities feel very similar to each other, with the problem only getting worse as the Fantastic Four made their appearance. Adding to the fact that some characters are almost carbon copies of Overwatch characters (Venom-Wrecking Ball and Captain America-Brigitte, for example) and there could be a problem of repetitiveness.

The community is also dissatisfied with the maps of the game, which are perceived as too few and with destructible environments that do not belong in a high level competitive game. Some technical issues still plague the PC version and most of the viewership so far (on Twitch and Youtube according to Esports Charts) has come from big names like Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel and Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek playing the game around the time of launch.

The playerbase, however, shows no signs of shrinking and all of the above problems (except from the hero design one, which would need a radical rethink) are solvable considering the massive profits generated by the game. Bloomberg reports $200 million in revenue so far for NetEase, with 40 million unique users since launch. 

But this seems to not be enough: the CEO of the company slashed the entire North American division and lamented astronomical licensing fees for the Disney IP that he almost didn’t approve, pushing the developer to use original design and leading to months of wasted work.

Marvel Rivals has the popularity going for it  but not the competitiveness — so it’s not quite ready for a successful and big esports scene. But there’s potential — especially with NetEase attempting to support esports initiatives. There’s a lot of interest and an active player base, but the game still has to figure out many strategic processes that are needed for an esports ecosystem to be attractive, sustainable and profitable.

League of Legends has shaken up its esports calendar in 2025 by introducing a new international event called the First Stand Tournament.

Set to take place in LoL Park in Seoul, South Korea from March 10th -16th, the competition will feature the Split 1 winners of  League of Legends’ five major leagues — LCK, LPL, LTA, LEC and LCP.  

Ahead of First Stand 2025, Esports Insider has detailed everything you need to know about Riot Games’ new, and unique, international event.

To kick things off, the theme of the event is ‘Yours For The Taking’ and its goal is to spice up the early season of League of Legends esports. This will be the first major international event to utilise Fearless Draft — one of Riot Games’ latest competitive systems —  which will be analysed later in detail. 

Moreover, there’s not just prize money that awaits the winner. The team that lifts the trophy will earn a second bye for their region at MSI 2025, advancing directly to the Bracket Stage. 

With high-level competition spread over a week of live matches, the First Stand Tournament will be a hotbed for new top-tier strategies that could define the rest of 2025.

The First Stand Tournament will consist of two distinct stages. 

The first will be a BO3 Round Robin Stage, where the top teams from Korea, China, the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific battle each other in a single best-of-three (BO3) round-robin format. 

To ensure fairness, game one side selection for each series is randomly pre-determined. This guarantees that every team has a side selection advantage in exactly two series and doesn’t in the other two.

After every match is completed, the team at the bottom of the group will be eliminated from the event. 

The remaining four teams will then advance to a single-elimination BO5 Knockout Stage.

Placement in the bracket will be determined by the team’s placement in the previous stage. As a result, the first-placed team will face fourth and the second-placed team will compete against third.

The winners of these matchups progress through the bracket, culminating in a final to crown — for the first time in League of Legends history — a First Stand champion.

Monday, March 10th: Groups Day 1

Tuesday, March 11th: Groups Day 2

Wednesday, March 12th: Groups Day 3

Thursday, March 13th: Groups Day 4

Friday, March 14th: Groups Day 5

Saturday, March 15th: Semifinals

Sunday, March 16th: Finals

By tuning in to every match live on the League of Legends Esports website and logging in with their Riot ID, viewers will be able to unlock Drops throughout First Stand.

Every Pentakill and Baron steal throughout the week will reward viewers with a 2025 Esports Capsule. Additionally, any series that goes to five games during the knockout stage will also reward a 2025 Esports Capsule.

The Finals on March 16th will reward viewers with an exclusive First Stand Brand emote named ‘I Am FUMING’.

Fearless Draft is a big part of the competitive changes that have come into the League of Legends esports ecosystem. The system has a clear objective of introducing even more champion variety to games beyond the traditional ban system. Here’s how it works.

During every best-of series, all champions used in the series become unavailable for both teams until the end of the match, regardless of which team selected them. 

This results in an additional set of bans called ‘Fearless Bans’ which are progressively added alongside the standard 10 bans from the pick/ban phase which remain in place for every game.

If we’re doing our math correctly (a detailed chart is available below), at the beginning of the fifth game of a best-of-five match, there will be a total of 50 banned champions forcing players and coaches to delve deep into their champion pool to get results. 

This guarantees a lot of match variety and, so far, the system has been well-received by the community following its implementation in Split 1.

Korea: Hanwha Life Esports (LCK Cup 2025 Champion)

Asia-Pacific: CTBC Flying Oyster (LCP 2025 Split 1 Champion) 

Americas: Team Liquid (LTA Cross Conference Champion) 

EMEA: Karmine Corp (LEC 2025 Winter Champion)

China: Top Esports (LPL Split 1 Champion)

One player that fans are going to have their eyes on during First Stand is Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je.

The top laner made headlines last year when he opted to leave reigning world champions T1 in favour of Hanwha Life Esports. Not only that, he then proceeded to beat his former teammates in the early stages of the LCK Cup Playoffs to qualify for First Stand.

Perhaps unknown to most, Hsu ‘Rest’ Shih-chieh is the longest-running member of CTBC Flying Oyster, having joined the organisation in 2022.

First Stand is going to be his first time at a major international event and his leadership skills with the team have very effective so far. With a roster composed of mostly new hires, there’s a lot of mystery, and excitement, surrounding how this team will perform.

Hanwha Life Esports

Team Liquid

CTBC Flying Oyster

Karmine Corp

Top Esports

Founded in 2015, the ESL Pro League has undergone many different iterations. Despite its changes in format, name, and structure, however, the competition has maintained its position as a premier destination for Counter-Strike esports. 

Coming into its 21st season, the ESL Pro League has once again adapted. Gone are the days of the partner team structure that was first implemented in Season 13. Instead, teams are invited to participate through Valve’s Global Standings and by qualifying via ESL’s Challenger ecosystem. Team participation has been reduced from 32 to 24, and this year’s ESL Pro League seasons will be held in Sweden as opposed to the familiar destinations in Malta. 

With ESL completing 20 seasons of its top-tier Counter-Strike competition, certain teams have proven to be specialists at the event. In this article, Esports Insider breaks down the most successful ESL Pro League teams and when the rosters held the trophy aloft.

Unfortunately, one isle winner of the ESL Pro League was not crowned in Seasons 11 and 12 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, ESL did manage to award regional victories for European and North American teams. Interestingly, this was the last time that ESL had separate leagues for the regions with Season 13 implementing just one global league. 

For Season 11, Fnatic and Team Liquid won their leagues in Europe and North America, respectively. Fnatic’s then fully Swedish roster features current player Freddy ‘KRIMZ’ Johansson. 

Team Liquid’s Season 11 roster features two familiar names still playing for the organisation. Keith ‘NAF’ Markovic and Russel ‘Twistzz’ Van Dulken are in the organisation’s current line-up, despite the latter leaving to join FaZE Clan for two years. 

Following a similar format, Season 12 crowned FURIA Esports and Astralis as North American and European champions, respectively. For FURIA, this is the organisation’s only technical ESL Pro League season trophy.

ESL ESEA Pro League Season 3 was won by none other than Luminosity Gaming, which took its fully Brazilian roster to the UK to topple Europe’s G2 Esports 3-2 and claim $200,000. Whilst the league was only in its third iteration, this was a monumental victory for the Americas’ Counter-Strike scene, given that Europe had claimed the first two events. 

Luminosity’s roster in 2016 consisted of some of Brazil’s biggest names in Counter-Strike, notably Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo and Marcelo ‘coldzera’ David. Unfortunately, the organisation may never improve on its solitary ESL Pro League trophy with Luminosity exiting Counter-Strike in 2019. 

Following on from Luminosity’s heroics in Season 3, North America’s Cloud9 won ESL Pro League Season 4 in Brazil. Featuring the likes of Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesie and Jacky ‘Stewie2K’ Yip — both of whom went on to become popular streamers within the esports scene — Cloud9 defeated SK Gaming’s Brazilian roster to etch their name in history. 

Whilst the North American organisation has failed to win another ESL Pro League, Cloud9 went on to secure its biggest trophy in Counter-Strike a few years later, winning the 2018 ELEAGUE Major in Boston. Despite being a heralded name within North America’s Counter-Strike scene the organisation announced that it was stepping away from the ecosystem in 2025. 

Despite winning three IEMs and two BLAST Premier World Finals, G2 Esports has only managed to claim one ESL Pro League trophy, all the way back in Season 5. 

The European organisation is certainly more known for its escapades in the 2020s, however, in 2017 G2’s fully French roster toppled North in Dallas, Texas to walk away with $225,000. Whilst all of its team members will go down in the history books, G2’s squad featured the likes of French superstar Dan ‘apEX’ Madesclaire, who went on to claim the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 trophy with Team Vitality. 

With four different winners in four consecutive seasons, SK Gaming avenged its loss to Cloud9 in 2016 to win ESL Pro League Season 6. 

During this time, the organisation featured two familiar names that have already been mentioned in this article: Coldzera and FalleN. In fact, Ricardo ‘boltz’ Prass is the only player that wasn’t a part of Luminosity’s ESL Pro League win. The Brazilian roster beat FaZe Clan’s European team in Odense, Denmark. Currently, SK Gaming has dropped out of the Counter-Strike scene.

Skipping a couple of seasons and Team Liquid won its one and only ESL Pro League title in Season 9 of the competition. With a roster consisting of NAF, Twistzz, Stewie2K, Nicholas ‘nitr0’ Cannella, and Jonathan ‘EliGE’ Jablonowski, Team Liquid prevented G2 Esports from securing a scent ESL Pro League trophy in the roster’s home ground of Montpellier, France. 

2019 proved to be a rather successful year for Team Liquid in Counter-Strike with the organisation also winning ESL One: Cologne and IEM Sydney, securing an Intel Grand Slam as a result. 

Winning the first global ESL Pro League event following the COVID-19 pandemic was Nordic esports organisation HEROIC.

Beating Gambit Esports 3-2 in the ESL Pro League Season 13 grand finals, HEROIC’s Danish roster features a lot of familiar names that are still competing at the highest level today. Martin ‘stavn’ Lund and Casper ‘cadiaN’ Møller have found a new home in Astralis, while René ‘TeSeS’ Madsen moved to Team Falcons in 2025. Interestingly, HEROIC were also the first team to win the ESL Pro League under its new partner team-led global league. 

The most recent team to claim only one ESL Pro League trophy is Team Vitality, with its victory coming in Season 16. Claiming $200,000 in Naxxar, Malta, Team Vitality toppled Team Liquid 3-2 in 2022 to win the event. 

Only two members — apEX and Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut — remain part of Team Vitality’s ESL Pro League winning roster. Aside from the two Frenchmen, the Season 16 roster also had Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen, Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif, and Lotan ‘Spinx’ Giladi.

Going back in time now, UK-based esports organisation Fnatic was not only the first team to win back-to-back ESL Pro League titles — it was the first winner of the competition. 

Defeating Cloud9 and NAVI, Fnatic subsequently won Seasons 1 and 2 of the ESL Pro League. With full Swedish rosters, four of Fnatic’s players won both events in 2015 — Jesper ‘JW’ Wecksell, Robin ‘flusha’ Rönnquist, Olof ‘olofmeister’ Kajbjer Gustafsson, and Freddy ‘KRIMZ’ Johansson. 

Alongside this group of players, Markus ‘pronax’ Wallsten and Dennis ‘dennis’ Edman won the ESL Pro League in Season 1 and Season 2, respectively. The Fnatic 2015 season is looked back upon fondly by many fans, with the team also picking up trophies at ESL One Cologne and ESL One Katowice 2015, both of which were considered Majors at the time. 

In 2018, historic esports organisation Astralis managed to secure back-to-back ESL Pro League victories. ESL Pro League trophies for Season 7 and Season 8, were part of Astralis’ unprecedented run, which saw the team go 406 consecutive days at number one on HLTV’s rankings between 2018 and 2019. 

The roster, which consisted of Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz, Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen, Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Højsleth, Lukas ‘gla1ve’ Rossander, and Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif, also won three Majors — StarLadder Berlin Major 2019, IEM Katowice Major 2019, and the 2018 FACEIT Major in London.

The most recent two-time ESL Pro League winner is Ukrainian esports organisation NAVI (Natus Vincere). Having secured its first ESL Pro League Trophy in Season 14, the team won the most recent edition of ESL’s competition, beating Eternal Fire in the Season 20 finals. 

Unsurprisingly, there is only one player who won both ESL Pro League events in 2021 and 2024 under the NAVI banner: Valerij ‘b1t’ Vakhovsjkyj. Its Season 14 roster included the likes of NAVI legend Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyljev whilst its team that won last year is unchanged for 2025. 

The penultimate team on this list is FaZe Clan, with its European-based Counter-Strike roster securing ESL Pro League trophies in Season 15 and Season 17. Claiming titles in Düsseldorf, Germany and Saint Julian’s, Malta, the organisation won the events with identical rosters.

Alongside a recurring name in Twistzz, the team that won in 2022 and 2023 consisted of Håvard ‘rain’ Nygaard, Helvijs ‘broky’ Saukants, Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen and Robin ‘ropz’ Kool. Aside from Twistzz and Ropz, who are not competing for Team Liquid and Team Vitality, the remaining three players are still with FaZe Clan.

The only team to win three global ESL Pro League events (Astralis and Fnatic won ESL Pro League events in Europe specifically), is German esports organisation MOUZ.

Its back-to-back ESL Pro League victories in Season 18 and Season 19 add to its Season 10 trophy in 2019 when the organisation was known as mousesports. Starting with its Season 10 victory, Ropz and Karrigan led their team to emphatically beat Fnatic 3-0 in Odense, Denmark.

In Season 18, nearly four years after its first Pro League trophy, MOUZ beat NAVI to claim its second title. Whilst MOUZ had a vastly different roster between this gap, David ‘frozen’ Čerňanský was a consistent factor in the team’s two ESL Pro League victories. Frozen was no longer with MOUZ, but the organisation still managed to beat Team Vitality last year to become Season 19 champions. 

With the end of the Snapdragon Pro Series (SPS) APAC Challenge Season, Mobile Legends in the Philippines will resume its MPL action later this month. Here is everything you need to know about the MPL Philippines Season 15.

As one of the strongest regions in the MLBB competitive scene, the Philippines is the home of some of the scene’s best talents. For the new season, however, the league has changed quite a bit.

Season 15 will kick off with two new esports teams in the competition. Team Falcons has acquired Blacklist International’s franchise slot, along with AP.Bren’s roster that previously won the M5 World Championship. The second team will be Twisted Minds, which now fields an MLBB roster in both MENA and the Philippines.

MPL Philippines Season 15’s regular season will kick off on February 28th and lasts until May 4th, 2025.

The eight teams will compete across three days each week throughout the next three months in a double round-robin, earning points to secure their spot in the playoff stage. All matches will be in a best-of-three (BO3) format.

Once the regular split is over, the top six teams will then advance to the playoff stage to compete for the title. The schedule is yet to be confirmed but should take place throughout May and ahead of the MLBB Mid Season Cup (MSC), which is part of the Esports World Cup.

MLBB’s first international tournament of the season is scheduled to occur sometime between July and August. The top two teams from MPL Philippines Season 15 will qualify for the event.

Matches will be broadcast separately in English and Filipino/Tagalog. Streams will be made available on MPL PH’s Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.

Among the eight participants, the top teams competing for the championship should be Team Falcons and ONIC Philippines. The former has an experienced lineup that has already tasted success at the highest level.

Meanwhile, the latter is fresh off the back of winning last year’s M6 World Championship. Whilst the Fnatic partnership is no more, ONIC has retained its entire championship-winning squad for MPL Philippines Season 15.

Aurora Gaming is also expected to perform well following its second-place finish in the MPL PH Season 14.

The FNCS (Fornite Champions Series) Major 1 Grand Finals is the first Major tournament of the 2025 Fortnite esports circuit.

Held online, the competition will see 33 teams competing across seven regions for varying amounts of prize money. Teams will vie for the opportunity to qualify for Fortnite’s world championship in Lyon, France.

Ahead of the action starting, here’s everything there is to know about the FNCS 2025 Major 1 Grand Finals.

For 2025, the FNCS has adopted a new qualification system for its Major tournaments and its season-ending world championships.

Teams competed in five weeks of Divisional Cups to qualify for the Major 1 Group Stage. Organisations then participated in the event for a chance to qualify for the Grand Finals taking place from February 15th, 2025, to February 16th, 2025.

For teams that failed to qualify for the Group Stage, there is also a Last Chance Qualifier which is open to all players in Divisions 1, 2 and 3. In total, there will be three Majors, each gaining qualification for the FNCS Global Championship.

For Major 1 specifically, the top two teams Europe and North America Cerntal will secure a place at the World Championship from September 6th to September 7th.

In total, there are seven regions that form the FNCS:

For Major 1, Europe has the largest prize pool of $816,000 (~£648,857). Meanwhile, North America Central has a $562,500 (~£447,243) prize pool, North America West and Brazil have $180,000 (~£143,102) prize pools, while Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania have a prize pool of $90,000 (~£71,546).

Aside from Europe and North America Central, only the winner of their respective Major 1 events will receive an invite to the FNCS Global Championship.

Across the two days, all 33 competing teams from their region will drop into 12 matches with six games taking place each day.

Scoring is determined by the number of eliminations scored and placement earned during a match.

The top teams with the highest scores at the end of the two days will book a place at the World Championship.

With several teams in with a chance of being the last one standing, there are many notable names viewers should keep an eye on over the two days of matches.

After winning Group 1 in Europe, Oxalys Bunch are one of the top trios in the region alongside the likes of FOKUS CLAN, FLC Clan and Guild Esports.

For North America Central, the Mexican team of Hybrid Sport won Group 1 for the region with the trio of Bucke, Okis and Kraez winning Group 3.

Compared to Europe, North America has several individual players representing esports organisations rather than an entire team. Brazil, Asia, the Middle East, Oceania and NA West only had two groups of teams battling for qualification to the Major, as opposed to three in NA Central and Europe.

For North America West, it was the team of Summit, Creep and Dom that walked out victorious in Group 2. Meanwhile, Xpon, Resypical and Krimz were victorious in Group 1.

Other notable names include Brazil’s trio of Nutifps, Renato, Asia’s Night, Zerokun, Larkpex and DayDus, Middle East’s Hellonsteam, Vysi, and P5EK and the team of Jxsn, Mana, and Phazgod competing in the Oceania tournament.

The 2025 edition of the FNCS Major 1 Grand Final will be shown on Fortnite’s official Twitch and YouTube channels.

The opening tournament of this year’s FNCS will aim to build on a successful end to 2024’s Global Championship which garnered peak viewing figures of 809,000.

PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025, the tournament organiser’s first international Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) event of the year, is kicking off in just two days.

Held in Bucharest’s Cluj-Napoca, the competition will see 16 top-tier teams fight for its $1.25m (~£1.04m) prize pool from February 14th-23th.

With the stage set, here is everything you need to know about PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025.

Cluj-Napoca’s format is divided into two parts: the Group Stage taking place at PGL Studio and the Playoffs at BT Arena. All matches are best-of-threes (BO3s) except for the best-of-five (BO5) Grand Final.

The first stage follows a 16-team Swiss system format, which draws random match-ups between squads that have not faced each other yet and then places teams in high, mid, and low tiers based on their match results. This continues across five rounds, with winners of the high groups advancing and losers of the low groups being eliminated.

The emerging top-eight rosters qualify for the Playoffs, commencing on February 21st. A single-elimination bracket is used to determine the Cluj-Napoca champion. As part of PGL’s new playoffs format, an additional Third Place Match is held ahead of the Grand Final.

Throughout the tournament, CS2 fans can tune into the English broadcast on PGL’s official Twitch, YouTube, Kick, and Facebook channels. With some matches being played simultaneously, an official secondary stream is available on Twitch, YouTube and Kick.

PGL has announced that day one of the Group Stage on February 14th will start at 10:00am EET/ 8am GMT with the final matches of the day expected to commence at 7pm EET / 5pm GMT.

For the Playoffs, the Friday, February 21st quarter-finals will start at 10:00am EET/ 8am GMT with the semi-finals taking place the next day at 5pm EET/ 3pm GMT.

Finally, Sunday’s third-place match and the Grand Final will begin at 3pm EET / 1pm GMT and 6pm EET/ 4pm GMT, respectively.

Content creators can also apply to co-stream the event as long as their broadcast will be in English.

Kicking off just five days after the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice Final, Cluj-Napoca will feature a unique lineup of teams. Several of the highest-ranking CS2 rosters have opted out of the event. Notably, current VRS ranking leader Team Spirit, as well as Katowice 2025 winner Team Vitality.

From the top-five teams, according to Valve’s CS2 ranking system, only Eternal Fire will attend Cluj-Napoca. The Turkish squad recently placed second at the BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 tournament. This, however, allows other organisations, such as TheMongolZ and SAW, to take centre stage instead.

Interestingly, Brazilian team Imperial Fe will also be among the contestants. Having won several iterations of ESL Impact, a league for marginalised genders, Imperial Fe recently became the first women’s roster to qualify for an IEM event.

The club was invited by PGL following the exit of fellow Brazilian organisation FURIA to prioritise a Visa acquisition for the BLAST.tv Austin Major.

VALORANT Masters Bangkok is the first international event of the 2025 VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT), the top echelon of Riot Games’ tactical shooter. 

Spanning almost two weeks from February 20th to March 2nd, eight of VCT’s best-performing teams from all regions will compete for its $500,000 (~£404,400) prize pool, with the winner taking home $250,000 (~£202,200).

Now that the four VCT Kickoff events (Pacific, China, EMEA and Americas) have declared their champions and representatives, here’s everything you need to know ahead of VALORANT Masters Bangkok 2025.

This year’s event is hosted at the UOB LIVE in Bangkok, Thailand, making it the first Masters event for the Southeast Asian country.

This is going to be the eighth Masters competition since its inception in 2021 and the third time in the last three years that it takes place in Asia after Tokyo 2023 and Shanghai 2024.

Overall, the VCT hasn’t made major changes to its calendar in 2025. However, its schedule has been slightly shifted, meaning that VALORANT’s first Masters event is occurring two weeks earlier than last year’s Masters Madrid, which took place in March.

During the tournament’s first week, the eight participating teams will compete in a Swiss Stage bracket with all matches being best-of-three (BO3). 

Teams need to record two wins to advance to the Playoffs, with two losses eliminating an organisation from the tournament. 

Following the Swiss Stage, the four remaining teams will advance to the Playoffs to compete in a double-elimination bracket. 

The Grand Final will take place on Sunday, March 2nd and will be a best-of-five (B05) series. Moreover, a show match will take place before the finals in a bid to hype up the crowd.

Swiss Stage: February 20th – February 24th (2AM PST / 10 AM BST start time)

Playoffs : February 27th (2AM PST / 10 AM BST start time)

Upper Finals / Lower Semis: February 28th (2AM PST / 10 AM BST start time)

Lower Finals: March 1st (2AM PST / 10 AM BST start time)

Grand Finals + Show match: March 2nd (2AM PST / 10 AM BST start time)

By viewing the tournament on Twitch and YouTube, fans will be able to earn two in-game drops. 

Watching from February 27th to March 1st will earn fans the ‘Crispy’ title. Meanwhile, watching the finals on March 2nd will reward fans with the Tuktuk spray. The spray features Wingman giving Clove, Jett, Harbor, and Gekko a ride on the iconic three-wheeler that is common on the streets of Bangkok

This international event features the eight best teams from each region of play: Americas, China, EMEA and Pacific. 

48 rosters in total competed in the four Kickoff events — 10 partner teams per region and promoted Ascension organisations. For this event, one team in particular proved that it is possible to climb the competitive ladder in VALORANT despite limited promotion opportunities. 

Alongside the prize pool, VALORANT Master Bangkok also provides a crucial opportunity to earn Championship Points.

Rewarded to the top four teams, depending on their placement, Championship points have been given a higher priority in 2025. Two teams from each region will qualify for Champions Paris in 2025 through Championship Points.  

1st Place: 5 Championship Points

2nd Place: 3 Championship Points

3rd Place: 2 Championship Points

4th Place: 1 Championship Point

The first two teams to qualify for Master Bangkok came from VCT China with Trace Esports and eventual Kickoff winner, EDward Gaming, securing a place in the event. 

Trace Esports, the first team that qualified for the international event, were strong performers in the competition, even knocking EDward Gaming to the loser bracket.

However, EDward Gaming, still riding the momentum from being crowned 2024 VALORANT world champions, enacted revenge by beating Trace 3-1 in the final. Zheng ‘ZmjjKK’ Yongkang from EDward Gaming racked up the most kills in the tournament with 313 eliminations using Neon, Jett and Raze, the latter of which is an agent that is defining the meta at the moment.

In VCT Pacific, DRX qualified as the first seed after beating T1 in the Grand Finals 3-2.

Both teams had very comparable performances in the Pacific Kickoff. Moreover, both of its clashes in the tournament (the Upper Bracket Final and the Grand Final) went to the very last game with DRX securing both wins by a thin margin. 

T1 was a favourite to take home the Kickoff trophy following a strong showing of results in the offseason and during the event. DRX’s performance, meanwhile, caused quite a surprise. The team comfortably defeated fellow Korean organisations Nongshim RedForce and Gen.G before sending T1 to the lower bracket and beating the organisation again in the final in two close series.

G2 Esports reigned supreme over the Americas Kickoff event with a dominant performance that saw the team dropping a total of two games, both of which were in the grand final. 

The team has become the first-ever Ascension side to win a VCT title after missing the mark twice in the VCT 2024 Americas Stage 1 and Stage 2. The second roster to qualify for the Masters Bangkok was the team G2 dropped those games to: fan-favourite Sentinels. 

The team struggled a little during the tournament but put on a solid performance making Sentinels valid contenders for the next international. G2 Esports and Sentinels will now have to face off against Trace Esports and DRX, respectively at the Masters in Bangkok.

VCT EMEA Kickoff was the last event to take place and saw Team Vitality and Team Liquid emerge as the proud owners of a ticket to Bangkok. 

Team Vitality got off to a strong start with a series of dominant victories in the upper bracket.

Meanwhile, in the lower bracket, it was Team Liquid getting triumph after triumph, even sending home tournament favourites Team Heretics 3-0 in the Lower Bracket Final. 

The Grand Final saw Team Vitality emerge victorious, capping off a triumphant weekend that saw the organisation’s CS2 roster win IEM Katowice. However, the event proved Team Liquid’s prowess and determination heading to the first Masters of the year. The first matches in Bangkok will see Team Vitality face off against T1 and Team Liquid against Edward Gaming. 

The 2025 F1 Sim Racing World Championship is making its return with Event 2 later this month.

In total, 10 F1 esports teams will be racing across four rounds to earn crucial points for the championship. Ahead of the competition, here’s a brief guide to give you all the information you need for F1 esports’ Event 2.

Firstly, it is important to note what is at stake.

The winner of the 2025 F1 Sim Racing World Championship will take home $50,000 (~£40,361) in prize money.

An additional prize pool is given to the constructors’ championship, with the first-place team receiving $130,000 (~£104,939).

The second event of F1’s esports competition will follow a similar format to the first round. Taking place on February 11th-February 13th, the 10 teams will compete in races across four circuits (Silverstone, Spa-Franchorchamps, Zandvoort and Circuit of the Americas).

One round is hosted on the first and third day, with two rounds taking place on day two.

Each round will consist of a full qualifying session and a 50% distance Grand Prix. Unlike the traditional F1 teams, each team will field three drivers, meaning there are 30 participants in each race.

To account for the increased number of participants, the first qualifying session (Q1) will see the top 16 drivers with the best-timed lap enter Q2, and Q3 will have a top 10. For the race, pitstop, and compound change are compulsory.

On Day 1 and Day 3, qualifying will kick off at 5 pm GMT and will be followed by the race at 8 pm GMT. On Day 2, the first race will start at 2 pm and the second one at 8 pm.

The races will be broadcast live via the official F1 YouTube esports, Twitch, and Facebook channels, as well as the dedicated F1 Esports social media channels.

After the first four rounds in Event 1, Williams driver Ismael Fahssi is leading the driver championship with 65 points. Not only did he win the opening round in Australia, but the Spanish driver maintained good consistency in all the following races.

He is followed by Red Bull racing driver Jarno Opmeer on 57 points. The two-time champion won Round 2 and came second in the latest race (Round 4) on the Jeddah circuit. Aston Martin driver Otis Lawrence is third at 47, having just won the last round and becoming the youngest driver to win a race at the age of 16 and 9 months.

For the constructors’ championship, Mercedes leads the way at 87 points thanks to strong performances by its three drivers, followed by Williams Esports and Red Bull Sim Racing.

Esports has a vast ecosystem that spans across a variety of games, each with its own unique structures and calendars. As such, fans of multiple esports are treated to major tournaments and events throughout the entirety of the year.

To help navigate esports’ hectic calendar, Esports Insider has created a month-by-month list of events that are taking place in 2025. These competitions range from annual World Championships to major leagues that cover entire regions. 

This list will be updated periodically as more major esports events and dates are announced. First published: 13/01/25.

League of Legends and VALORANT kick off esports’ competitive calendar with their international respective leagues all commencing. However, the first month of 2025 also concludes Apex Legends’ latest season as the 2024 ALGS Championship heads to Japan.

February sees some of the best teams across Rainbow Six Siege, VALORANT and Counter-Strike 2 collide with the Six Invitational 2025, VALORANT Masters Bangkok 2025 and PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025 all taking place, respectively. Meanwhile, Fortnite’s esports ecosystem takes centre stage across the world with its online Major 1 Grand Finals.

League of Legends’ esports ecosystem will debut its new tournament, First Stand, in March. Meanwhile, Capcom Cup 11, Street Fighter 6’s biggest event of the year, and Rocket League’s RLCS 2025 Birmingham Major stand out within a very busy month in esports.

Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2 largely dominate April 2025, with the likes of PGL Bucharest, BLAST Rivals Spring 2025, IEM Spring, ESL One Raleigh and PGL Wallachia Season 4 all starting in the month. Call of Duty League’s Stage 3 Major and ESL Snapdragon Pro Series: Mobile Masters 2025 are other stand-out events in April.

Counter-Strike 2 continues to dominate the 2025 esports calendar with four significant events happening in May alone. Notably, this includes ESL Impact League Season 7, Counter-Strike 2’s women’s-only esports competition.

June is jam-packed with international events. VALORANT, Counter-Strike, Rocket League and League of Legends will host notable global competitions to find the best teams in their respective games at 2025’s mid-way point.

July marks the start of the 2025 Esports World Cup, a multi-title esports tournament in Saudi Arabia. As such, a range of major esports events will be scheduled throughout the month. As of right now, the biggest events announced are the PUBG Mobile World Cup 2025 and its new Chess competition.

Alongside the continuation of the Esports World Cup, August will see titles such as Pokemon UNITE and GeoGuessr conclude their respective esports ecosystems.

September sees various Counter-Strike 2 competitions commence, including the ESL Pro League and the StarLadder StarSeries. However, headlining this month is the RLCS 2025 World Championship, which has yet to reveal its location.

So far, very little has been announced for October. However, the 2025 League of Legends World Championship, one of esports’ biggest events of the year, is set to be held in China with PGL hosting another significant Counter-Strike 2 tournament in Serbia.

November sees the conclusion of PUBG Mobile’s esports ecosystem, whilst Rainbow Six, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2 all host notable competitions.

Written by: Tom Daniels & Olivia Richman