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Leading Counter-Strike event organiser ESL has announced the list of invites for the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Sydney event, which is set to take place from October 16-22.
Seven invites were handed to teams who are partners with the tournament organiser, four were offered to teams due to their ESL world ranking, and one went to the local Australian hero.
Of the 11 total invites, eight teams from the top 10 in the ESL world rankings will make the trip down under for the first international CS:GO event held in Australia since 2019.
Among the notable absentees are the two all-Danish squads, with world no.1 Heroic and world no.6 Astralis declining their invites to the $250,000 event.
However, even without those two teams, there will still be a lot of talent on display in Sydney, with recently crowned IEM Cologne champions G2 Esports, BLAST.tv Paris Major champions Team Vitality, and ESL Pro League Season 17 winners FaZe Clan all accepting their invites.
Teams that weren’t offered direct invites will have to go through qualifiers to earn their spot at IEM Sydney, with two spots on offer at the European qualifier and one spot available for the winner of each of the North American, Asian and Oceanian qualifiers.
IEM Sydney teams
- Team Vitality
- ENCE
- FaZe Clan
- G2 Esports
- Natus Vincere
- MOUZ
- European Qualifier
- European Qualifier
- Cloud9
- GamerLegion
- Monte
- Fnatic
- Grayhound (Local Hero Invite)
- North American Qualifier
- Asian Qualifier
- Oceania Qualifier
