BLAST Open 2025: Everything you need to know about the new CS2 event for underdogs

The BLAST Open 2025 event will have a tournament structure where underdog teams can go head-to-head with some of the world's best professional CS2 players. These tournaments will be held at premier locations. However, many people would wonder what defines an underdog team.

The BLAST Open 2025 will give four teams the chance to go up against the world's elite. Here's how the four underdog teams can make it.

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BLAST Open 2025: Underdogs go up against the elite

The BLAST Open 2025 tournament structure was announced by the organizer on June 14, 2024. It is one of the three new structures BLAST will introduce in the upcoming year.

According to the Open structure, 16 teams will play against one another with 12 of them being the top highest-ranking teams in terms of their Valve Global Ranking such as Vitality, the current G2 Esports, and more. This leaves out four slots to be filled by underdogs.

These slots will be filled by teams that come through the regional qualifiers from four different regions as listed below:

• One team from BLAST Rising Asia
• One team from BLAST Rising Europe
• One team from BLAST Rising North America
• One team from BLAST Rising South America

The qualifiers will mix these underdog teams with the world's top professional teams to give them the competition they deserve at this level.

The first week of the tournament will see the teams split into two groups. Each group will have eight teams that will go through a double-elimination bracket with a BO3 format. In the end, six will remain.

This first week will be organized in the BLAST Studios. Next, the six playoff teams will travel to some of the best arenas in the world to play single-elimination BO3 format matches against one another.

Finally, the grand finale will be a BO5 matchup to decide the winner of the BLAST Open 2025 event. The BLAST Rising tournament series serves as a pathway into this main event.

These tournaments will invite eight teams in total to compete. Four of these teams will be invited based on Valve regional rankings and the other four will arrive at this stage through the open qualifiers.

These eight teams will battle against one another in a BO3 format with the last standing, and the winning team will make it to the BLAST Open 2024 event to play against the elite of the Counter-Strike 2 world.

The six teams to qualify for the final stages of the BLAST Open 2024 will be flown to Lisbon with the matches starting from March 18 to 30, 2025. Moreover, the Open will be played again in the same year with the new finals destination being London from August 26 to September 7.