Now that the RMRs have changed, we’ve found ourselves scratching our heads trying to understand them sometimes. That gave us the idea: Why not make a guide to help you figure out what’s going on? So here we go!

Let’s start with a few notable changes:

The Closed Qualifiers are still online but have noticeably lost a stage.

Open Qualifiers are gone, except for the Asia Pacific region, but more on that later. There are loads of critics about that decision, as part of the magic of Majors was the upset teams that we’d see rise from open qualifiers. But Valve is trying to protect teams, it seems.

In a similar vein, Seeding has also changed. The positions in the Swiss stages no longer matter. The qualified teams instead get sorted by VALVE’s rankings, which benefits established organizations that do poorly in qualifiers. You know who you are.

With that out of the way, let’s dive into what’s going on in each region:

Europe starts its qualifiers first on the 21st with two groups, creatively named A & B.

Group A is headlined by ENCE. While B is headlined by BIG and Cologne sweethearts SAW. They’ll be playing simultaneously, so you have to pick and choose what to watch.

These EU qualifiers run through Friday and send teams to the next stage of EU RMRs in November.

Now, let’s switch to the (arguably) second-best CS region: The Americas. Sorry Asian CS fans. This region kicks off with individual qualifiers starting next Monday, and qualifies teams for one big qualifier in November.

One thing to note is that there are SA teams in the NA qualifier. But they have to because they’re bootcamping in NA. That’s both a problem for these online games and for equality because richer teams could go to NA and get better practice, then play SA qualifiers and stomp.

And finally, a region that really should be called “Rest of the World”: Asia-Pacific.

It’s one broooaad region. Oceania, China, East Asia, and Southeast Asia all have their own qualifiers here. Oceania and China run from the 23rd-24th, which gets followed right up by South and SE Asia from the 25th-26th. And finally it also contains the “Middle East” qualifier which consists of an Arabian, Levantine & North African, and South African qualifier. We have a name for this, it's MESA.

These qualifiers also takes place over two days this week, from the 21st to the 22nd. The qualified teams then play each other, online, for a single Asia-Pacific RMR spot from on 28th to the 30th.

Does that make any sense? If it doesn’t, complain to Valve. Don’t shoot the messenger. That said, if you have questions, 📥 reply to this email and ask.