Want to know who will win the first major CS2 tournament of 2025?
Then read 1xBet review about the upcoming IEM Katowice 2025!
Esports calendar 2025
The Counter-Strike 2 tournament schedule in 2025 promises to be very busy. In addition to the already familiar IEM and Pro League series from ESL, the calendar now includes new tournaments from BLAST (Bounty, Open, Rivals), PGL (Cluj-Napoca, Astana, Belgrade), Skyesports, YaLLa, StarLadder and others.
As a result, the number of major tournaments has grown from 18 to 30, 11 of which are millionaires. $1,250,000 will be played out at two majors – BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 and CS2 Major Championship Winter 2025, and at another 9 tournaments this year, players can share a prize pool of $1,000,000 or more.
IEM Katowice 2025 format
The Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2025 tournament will be held in Poland from January 29 to February 9. 24 teams that occupy high places in Valve’s global ranking will be invited to the competition with a $1,000,000 prize pool.
Top 8 teams will directly advance to the Group Stage of the IEM Katowice 2025 tournament, another 16 will begin the tournament from the Play-In stage, where the second eight participants of the Group Stage will be determined. The Imperial Female women’s team is among the participants in this stage.
IEM Katowice 2025 main stage will be held in the format of two double-elimination from two groups of 8 teams each. The 3 best teams from each group will advance to the Playoffs. Group leaders will begin the final stage with the semi-finals, and the second and third places will begin with the quarter-finals.
IEM Katowice 2025 Favorites
The esports off-season at the beginning of the year is traditionally used by teams to find new players, and therefore, the first tournaments of the year are very unpredictable. Mid-table teams with well-coordinated squads can bypass recognized favorites who have signed new players. At the moment, many teams have not yet announced their final rosters.
The Valve game developers decided to add even more unpredictability to this process and replaced Vertigo, the most disliked map among esports players, with the radically updated Train in the map pool. It is difficult to name the clear favorites of the tournament in such conditions, but we will still try so that you don’t have 1xBet complaints.
- G2 Esport
G2 Esport confidently occupies first place in the Valve and HLTV ratings, winning three major tournaments last year: IEM Dallas 2024, BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024 and World Final 2024. However, the team has not managed to win a single major, and at the end of the season, leader Nikola “NiKo” Kovac left the team and has not yet been replaced. Will the samurai win IEM Katowice 2025? The correct answer to this question can bring solid winnings on the 1xBet bookmaker platform.
- Team Spirit
Team Spirit’s chances of winning IEM Katowice 2025 look better than G2 Esports. The team won the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 and will come to the tournament in Katowice as last year’s winner. And most importantly, all the star players of Team Spirit, including Danil “donk” Kryshkovets, remained in their places.
- The MongolZ
In 2024, the MongolZ, with the support of main sponsor 1xBet, won several major tournaments, earned more than $1,000,000 in prize money and reached the Playoff Stage at a major. What is 1xBet? It is a reliable international bookmaker that cooperates with top esports teams and organizations, including ESL, PGL, HLTV and many others. At the moment, the MongolZ occupy a record-breaking third place among all Asian teams in Valve’s rankings, and nothing could stop them from winning IEM Katowice 2025.
Any team from the top 10 world rankings can be safely listed among the tournament favorites, including FaZe Clan, Team Vitality, NAVI and others. Nobody knows yet how IEM Katowice 2025 will actually end. That is why pay special attention to this tournament, make bold bets and hit the jackpot with maximum odds together with 1xBet!