PGL shares details for 2025-2026 CS2 esports circuit

Esports production company and tournament organiser PGL has revealed details surrounding its upcoming Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) events for 2025 and 2026.

The news includes a change of venue for the first event of the season — now set for Cluj-Napoca, Romania — as well as details about prize pool payment and the playoff structure.

PGL initially announced details about the new CS2 events earlier this year after Valve changed the CS2 esports rulebook to no longer allow tournament organisers to create exclusive ‘partner team’ leagues. This led several organisers, such as PGL and StarLadder, to announce new events and the likes of BLAST and ESL to restructure their ecosystems.

The 2025 calendar of PGL events will start with a new location. Initially set for Buenos Aires, the first event of the season will now be held in Cluj-Napoca, a Romanian city known for hosting a CS:GO Major in 2015. According to PGL, the decision to relocate the event to Romania from Buenos Aires was made due to “an exceptionally busy CS2 calendar with numerous back-to-back events.”

Alongside Cluj Napoca, PGL will host its other 2025 tier-one tournaments in Bucharest, Romania, Astana, Kazakhstan and Belgrade, Serbia. The same four locations will also be in PGL’s 2026 calendar alongside two yet-to-be-revealed locations.

The playoffs of all the tournaments will include eight teams, and PGL says that it is the only Tier 1 organiser to offer an eight-team playoff format. In addition, all of the tournaments will feature a third-place decider match to make the event more interesting to teams and viewers. The company said that each event will have four quarterfinals on a Friday, followed by one show match and two semifinals on a Saturday. The third-place decider and grand finals will occur on Sunday.

The prize pools for all the events were slightly changed. They will feature the same amount of money as before, but the prize pools were adjusted to provide a bigger percentage of the prize pool to the third-place team instead of having the same amount for third and fourth place.

As a result, the prize distribution for each tournament is: first place $400,000 (~£313,000), second place $187,500 (~£147,000) and third place $150,000 (~£118,000). Each tournament will feature a $1.25m (~£980,000) prize pool.

Lastly, PGL announced that it is committed to paying out prize money within two weeks of each event’s completion if all teams submit their invoices on time. The company said this time frame “sets a new standard for efficiency in the esports industry.”