Esports Nations Cup opens CS2 qualifier registration

The Esports Foundation opened registration for Counter-Strike 2 open qualifiers tied to the Esports Nations Cup. Ninety-six national qualifiers will feed regional events that will determine the 24 teams traveling to Riyadh for the Nov. 10–15 tournament, which carries a $1,320,000 prize pool. The foundation described the campaign as the “largest open qualifier in Counter-Strike history.”

National qualifiers run from July 6 to July 16, followed by regional qualifiers from July 17 to July 19. Winners of the national events will be grouped into regional competitions that allocate the available 24 slots for the Riyadh main event.

Seeding for national qualifiers will use the June VRS ranking where available. For countries not represented in the VRS, organisers will use the combined FACEIT ELO points of registered players as a seeding tool. The ENC ranking that produced the list of 96 countries used the combined points of each country’s top five highest-ranked players, with a limit of three players from the same VRS-ranked team counted. For nations without enough VRS-ranked players, a separate ranking was compiled from the sum of the top 40 active players’ FACEIT ELO during May.

Regional allocations are split across 11 regions. Western Europe has four ENC slots and includes Denmark, France, Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Finland, Portugal, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Iceland and Italy. Eastern Europe has four slots and covers Ukraine, Israel, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Kosovo, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. North America has three slots and includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. South America has three slots covering Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and Paraguay.

Middle East and Central Asia have three slots covering Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tajikistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Armenia. North Africa has one slot for Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. Sub-Saharan Africa has one slot covering South Africa, Mauritius, Senegal, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ghana and Angola. South and East Asia have two slots and include Mongolia, China, Pakistan, India, South Korea, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei and Japan. Southeast Asia has two slots covering Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Brunei Darussalam. Oceania has one slot for Australia, New Zealand, Guam and Fiji.

National team rosters are limited to a maximum of three players from the same VRS-ranked team. The Nations Cup rulebook allows the best 32 registered rosters in each country at the registration deadline to take part in a national qualifier, with that cap increased to 64 in some countries.

Teams can register for ENC qualifiers on FACEIT by filtering the game to CS2. The Riyadh main event is classified as a tier-2 LAN, which means organisations that temporarily release a core of three players to compete in the Nations Cup can still earn VRS points.

The Esports Foundation will run the national and regional events to determine the teams that will compete in Riyadh in November.