ESL Australia has announced that EBGames Expo Sydney 2016 will feature a 4-team Oceanic CS:GO tournament with $10,000 AUD (~$7,500) on the line. The event is unrelated to the ESL Australia & NZ Championships, where Season 2 has already begun with Parallax leading the scoreboard after two weeks into the league. ESL will host a online qualifier for the Oceania region, which is open to all participants. The qualifier will split the teams into four separate brackets, with the initial two brackets taking place on 10th of September and the last two brackets occurring the day after. Each bracket will have two different stages. The first stage will consist of a best-of-one groupstage format. The top two teams from each group will progress to the next stage, featuring a best-of-one single-elimination bracket with a best-of-three final instead. Athletico will be the main favourites after winning ESL ANZ Championship S1 Finals The overall winners of each bracket will secure their tickets to the main event, located in Exhibition Hall 6 at Sydney Olympic Park. The two-day LAN Finals will be held from the 30th of September to the 1st of October. On the first day, the final four teams will face each other at least once in a best-of-one round-robin format to decide seedings for the final day. These seedings will decide the semi-final playoffs, with the winner of each, meeting in the Grand final later. Here is the schedule:

Open Qualifier

• September 10 – Bracket #1
• September 10 – Bracket #2
• September 11 – Bracket #3
• September 11 – Bracket #4

LAN Finals

• September 30 – Round Robin – BO1
• October 1 – Single Elimination playoffs – BO3

If you are based in this region, you can sign up for the open qualifier with your team by visiting ESL’s website. Additional information about the qualifier is also included via the link.