Valve officially announced new T1 and T2 events' invitation qualification requirements..

Valve announced on its official website on Saturday that it will adopt a stricter new Tournament Operation Requirements (TOR) to determine the invitation qualifications for all Counter Strike 2 (CS2) Tier 1 (T1) and Tier 2 (T2) events.

According to Valve's official statement, this new system aims to regulate the seeding, wild cards and qualification rights of each team in a stricter manner to minimize the occurrence of teams complaining about being unfairly disqualified and ensuring fair competition.

Under the new system, the minimum number of invited teams for all T1 events will increase from the original minimum of 16 to 20, and all T2 events can only invite teams ranked after 12th in the global VRS ranking, which is 4 positions lower than the previous threshold of 8th place.

This means that if a team can consistently rank in the top 20 in the global VRS ranking, they will be able to consistently participate in all Valve-certified ranking events and enjoy the participation allowances of major tournament organizers. Tournaments that have already been announced should not be affected by the new rules.

At the same time, starting from 2027, the announcement date of all events must be set 22 months before the official start of the main event, 2 months earlier than the original requirement of at least 2 years in advance.

The deadline for event organizers to announce the details of Additional information (such as prize distribution, map pool) for T1 events and wildcard events must also be advanced from 12 months before the official start of the main event to 10 months before the start of the main event.

In addition, Valve also announced that this rule change will play a key role in adjusting the seeding system.

In the future, event organizers will no longer rely on VRS to determine the seeding order, but will use the VRS version specified in the event's "Additional  Information Announcement".

All teams must also meet each of the following conditions to qualify as wildcard:

- Rank lower than 12th in both global and regional VRS

- Include at least 3 players in the lineup who have been among the top 12 teams in the VRS invitation list in the past 6 months

- Win the first/second place in the same or secondary level event in the past 6 months

Finally, the geographical area disclosure rules for each event have also been updated simultaneously.

In the future, organizers no longer need to disclose broad geographical areas (such as North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, etc.), but must clearly mark the visa jurisdiction of the event venue (such as the United States, Schengen Area, China, etc.).