PGL shortens Masters Bucharest to avoid a scheduling clash with IEM Chengdu

The $1.25 million PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 is set to finalize a day earlier than PGL originally planned, the Romanian tournament organizer announced today, September 9th. PGL has made this change to resolve a clash with IEM Chengdu.

While the list of teams attending PGL Masters Bucharest remains unknown, ESL already announced that all current top 10 teams in the world, minus Aurora, will attend the Chinese event.

With this change, PGL hopes that more teams will participate in Masters Bucharest, which will now run from October 24th to November 1st. This will give teams more time to fly to China and attend IEM Chengdu, which kicks off on November 3rd.

Before this change, teams that made top four at PGL Masters Bucharest would not be able to arrive in Chengdu in time for the first match on November 3rd.

And, to make matters worse, ESL announced that a last-minute withdrawal from IEM Chengdu would result in a ban from IEM Kraków, the next ESL Pro Tour event.

According to HLTV, several teams were reconsidering attending PGL Masters Bucharest as everyone is committed to attending IEM Chengdu.

This is what PGL said in today's announcement:

We’ve adjusted the schedule for PGL Masters Bucharest, and the event will now conclude a day earlier: on Saturday, November 1st, instead of Sunday.

At PGL, we are strong supporters of transparency, the strict application of rules, and a fair ecosystem. We would like to draw everyone’s attention to what has been announced in the past, so everyone knows what to expect, and to emphasise what is important for both teams and the wider community to remember and understand.

As part of the additional information for Cluj-Napoca 2026, we posted a rule that could disqualify a roster from a Direct VRS Invite:

“A team will be denied an invitation if they accepted the invite for, but failed to attend, the previous PGL event for which they were eligible.”

Following that announcement, we have decided to review it and not include it as part of the rules for our future events. This rule will not apply to any other PGL events in 2026 (with the exception of PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026) or to any future tournaments.

This crucial change to PGL Masters Bucharest's schedule comes mere days after the PGL CEO, Silviu Stroie, hinted that ESL and BLAST have a monopoly and will do "whatever it takes" to stop teams from attending PGL events.

It remains unclear, though, whether shortening PGL Masters Bucharest will incentivize teams to attend the tournament.