IEM Cologne 2023

History of Cologne tournaments

CS:GO championships in Cologne are iconic. The first CSGO tournament in the German city of just over a million players took place in 2014, but was already a major event.

From then on, ESL decided to take the venue as a starting point, organising the event in Cologne every year. The exception was in 2020, when the organizers had to cancel the tournament due to the coronavirus pandemic.

However, in all subsequent years, the series returned to LANXESS arena, finally forgetting about the restrictions. Thus, tournaments in Cologne are an iconic event for every professional player as real history is made here and the names of the winners go down in textbooks forever.

IEM Cologne 2023 basics

The championship will begin with the Play-In phase, where sixteen participants will compete for eight berths to the group stage in a Double-Elimination format. The best teams from the first leg will advance to the group stage to face the invited participants.

The group stage will take place in the GSL format, presenting another Double-Elimination. Here, the sixteen remaining competitors will be divided into two groups, from which three representatives from each group will qualify for the play-offs.

How the passes to IEM Cologne 2023 are distributed

The organisers have announced in advance the rules for the Cologne tournament. The following teams will advance directly to the group stage:

• Winner of IEM Katowice 2023 - G2 Esports.
• Winner of ESL Pro League Season 17.
• The winner of IEM Rio 2023.
• Winner of IEM Dallas 2023.
• BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 winner.
• The top three representatives of the ESL rankings.

In turn, the following teams will be invited to the Play-In stage:

• The winner of the Meisterschaft regional tournament.
• Winners of partner tournaments (there will be 3 of them in total).
• Top 12 ESL regional ranking representatives.

Where to watch IEM Cologne 2023?

We offer an up-to-date schedule of IEM Cologne 2023 matches and the opportunity to follow the CSGO matches live via streaming in various languages. We also have an updated match page where you can follow everything that is happening on the server.

At the same time, you can find expert forecasts for all IEM Cologne 2023 matches. CS:GO live odds are another interesting feature that lets you keep up with all the changes at the Cologne tournament.