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Tournament organisers have announced that the PGL Belgrade 2025 Counter-Strike 2 tournament will not feature qualifiers, with the field to instead be made up of invitees based on the Valve Regional Standings (VRS).
PGL’s fourth CS2 tournament of the year, set to run from October 25 until November 2, will follow the approach used for the recently concluded PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025.
PGL Belgrade 2025 will feature direct invitations for the top 16 VRS teams. pic.twitter.com/BiLF8iEipm
— PGL (@pglesports) April 12, 2025
While the news suggests the Romanian company is edging towards removing qualifiers for its events, the upcoming PGL Astana 2025 and PGL Bucharest 2025 have four slots reserved for champions of regional qualifiers.
The trend of dropping open qualifiers for Counter-Strike 2 events has been noticeable, with several Intel Extreme Masters and FISSURE Playground tournaments taking the same route.
The Esports World Cup 2025 will only partially follow the new trend, with 15 out of 16 slots allocated via VRS.
The final spot will be awarded to the winners of the Asian Champions League 2025, which is set to run from May 6-16.
PGL Belgrade 2025 will be the 22nd S-Tier CS2 esports tournament of the season, succeeding Thunderpick World Championship 2025.
The Serbian event will use the same format as PGL Astana 2025, featuring 16 CS2 teams who will vie for the lion’s share of the US$1.25 million prize pool.
The tournament will start with a 16-team Swiss System group stage with all games played as best-of-three (Bo3) series and only the top eight teams proceeding to the playoffs.
Playoffs are single-elimination, with all games — except for the grand final — played as Bo3. The grand final will be a best-of-five series.
PGL Belgrade 2025 invites will be sent out after the September 25 VRS update.
