In the email sent to tournament organizers, Valve stated they would “have to explore penalties” if missing information regarding 2025 events was not “addressed immediately.”
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The tournaments with no announced location past the deadline include:
2025
IEM Spring - April 21-27
BLAST Rivals S1 - April 28-May 4
StarLadder StarSeries Season 19 - May 26-June 1 (it’s expected that this event has been cancelled)
ESL Pro League Season 22 - September 27-October 12
Thunderpick World Championship Finals - October 15-19
BLAST Rivals S2 - November 10-16
2026
BLAST Bounty S1 - January 12-25
The following tournaments have had the country they will be played in announced, but nothing more specific (Valve’s rules don’t state how specific the location announcement has to be):
2025
Skyesports Souvenir - February 17-23
Skyesports Masters - May 26-June 1
Skyesports Championship - September 15-21
CS Asia Championships - October 1-13
Skyesports World Tour - November 10-16
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The text of the email sent to tournament organizers is as follows:
"We have been getting a few common questions about tournament requirements. These are just reminders and clarifications of the requirements that are already in place and are part of your tournament license agreements.
"2027 Tier 1 events must be announced two years prior to the event start date. We are not issuing exceptions to this requirement (e.g., A Feb 1st 2027 main event needs to be announced by Feb 1st 2025).
"The Additional Information for your Tier 1 events must be fully announced one year prior to the event. Past that date, you need an exception to change any details of your event (e.g., Prize Pool amounts and allocation).
"The deadline for announcing 2025/6 events is past. This includes changing 2025/6 event dates.
"The deadline for announcing Additional Information for 2026 is now rolling. Any changes to 2025 Additional Information requires an exception.
"Some announced 2025 Tier 1 events are apparently missing some details (e.g., location). This needs to be addressed immediately or we will have to explore penalties.
“We’re happy to provide some guidance with respect to compliant tournament formats, but please review the tournament operation requirements page again. We updated the page recently to make it a bit easier to follow and clarified some areas where there was some confusion.”