The Cathedral awaits.

We’ve made it, lads and lasses and everyone else. We’ve made it through the tumultuous winter, the mind-numbing Spring, the endless ESL Pro League games, the multitude of CCTs, and a whole month of player break.

We’ve made it to IEM Cologne. This is the one that really matters.

The best teams in the world, in the best arena in the world, all playing the best game in the world. If we were any more excited, we would have already wet ourselves.

Wednesday morning is your kick-off point with the Play-ins. There are zero BO1s all tournament long, and the final is in the bloody LANXESS Arena with a 20K capacity, in case you weren’t excited enough. We won’t lie to you, though, the first games could be… a little more exciting.

It’s like the World Cup, though. Sometimes, the World Cup has a terrible opening game that includes minnows like Saudi Arabia or Scotland. But you still watch and get hyped.

FlyQuest open the event against hometown heroes BIG, or you can choose to watch The MongolZ vs. SAW. It’s not great, but HEROIC and MIBR are up next with BetBoom vs. 9z.

We promise you, Cologne gets better.

Eternal Fire vs. Falcons, now that’s a fun one. This one could go either way, and Falcons are perennial fan favourites. Whether you love them or love to hate them, you want to watch them.

Complexity vs Alternate aTTaX, however, can only be fun if Complexity lose.

Thankfully, day one ends on a high note. FURIA vs. Imperial is spicier than good churrasco, and Liquid vs. paiN is not just the name of most NACS fans’ biography but also a lovely ending.

And each day gets progressively better. The final of IEM Cologne is in just 13 days. We’ve got 11 days of German Counter-Strike goodness, and we’ve now officially wet ourselves.

Hate it when that happens.