FISSURE Playground #1 announces 16 participating teams

FISSURE Playground #1, an offline Counter-Strike 2 tournament organized by Serbian organizer FISSURE, has officially announced the list of 16 participating teams.

The event will be held at the Sava Center in Belgrade from July 15 to 20, 2025, and will feature a total prize pool of up to $1 million and offer valuable Valve Regional Points (VRS), which will influence invitation qualifications for future Counter-Strike 2 events.

According to the official announcement, the invited teams were selected based on the global VRS rankings on May 25, 2025, of which only GamerLegion (9th) and 3DMAX (10th) were among the top ten teams. Other participating teams include Virtus.pro, Complexity, HEROIC, Astralis, FURIA, BIG, TYLOO and other internationally renowned teams.

However, several top teams, including the Austin Major champion Team Vitality, did not participate, such as Team Falcons, Team Spirit and FaZe Clan. Industry analysts believe that the absence of these teams may be due to the fact that FISSURE Playground #1 and IEM Cologne (starting on July 23) are too close in time, so they chose to avoid the risk of overlapping schedules.

In addition, the Ukrainian team B8 Esports also announced in advance that it would not participate in this event, and stated that the decision was made after referring to community feedback and internal evaluation.

This tournament will adopt the GSL double-elimination group stage and single-elimination quarterfinals system. The group stage and semi-finals are both best-of-three, and the finals are best-of-five.

As the first offline Counter-Strike 2 event after the BLAST.tv Austin Major, this year's FISSURE Playground will become an important stage for mid-level teams to compete for points and attention.