Esports Nation Cup announces $1.3m Counter-Strike 2 tournament

The Esports World Cup Foundation announced that Counter-Strike 2 will be among the games played at the Esports Nations Cup in November. The tournament will feature 24 national teams from ten larger regions around the world. The event will feature a $1.32 million prize pool and take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from November 10th to 15th. It is worth noting that these dates directly overlap with BLAST Rivals Fall 2026, which will run from November 11th to 15th.

The event will be a spiritual successor to ESWC tournament series, E-Frag's World Championships series, and the Chinese WESG events. All teams at the ENC must be composed exclusively of five players with the same citizenship. If three members of an organization participate in the event, the team can earn VRS points. However, no more than three members of a team ranked on the VRS on June 1st can participate.

The tournament will be executed in four phases:

1. The official June 1st VRS ranking will be used to determine which 96 nations are eligible to participate in the tournament. If 96 cannot be chosen from that, FACEIT Elo points from the best players of the remaining nations will be used.

2. 96 national qualifiers will be played, with each qualifier featuring 32 to 64 teams. The winner of each single-elimination qualifier will become the designated national team for the ENC.

3. The remaining 96 teams will be sorted into 10 regional qualifiers, where the top 24 teams across all of them will reach the main event in Riyadh. Each regional qualifier is double-elimination and will send a pre-determined number of teams between one and four to the main event. (For example, Western Europe will send four, North America will send three, and Oceania will send one)

4. The final 24 teams will compete on LAN at the ENC for over $1 million in prizes. The tournament will start with four groups of six that will play a bo1 round-robin to determine the top four teams in each group. The final 16 will then play in a single-elimination bracket where all matches are bo3, except the final, which is bo5. A third-place decider will also take place.