ESL have announced that the first two confirmed teams to attend IEM Oakland will be the two Major finalists from ESL One Cologne 2016: SK and Liquid. Back in May ESL announced that the first stop in Season 11 of the Intel Extreme Masters series to feature CS:GO would be IEM Oakland, from November 19-20. The event will take place inside the Oracle Arena, which is most famously known for being home to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA, and also feature a League of Legends tournament, in a similar fashion to last year’s IEM San Jose. Both SK and Liquid will compete at IEM Oakland ESL have now announced the first two teams confirmed for the twelve team event, and they have billed the first two invites as a rematch of the Major grand finals as they are SK and Liquid. SK of course took down Liquid 2-0 in the ESL One Cologne Major but by the time IEM Oakland comes around, the latter team will be coming into the event with their permanent new fifth Jacob “Pimp” Winneche in lieu of Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. ESL have also revealed the format of IEM Oakland which will be the exact same as IEM Katowice: twelve teams divided into two groups with the top three teams in each group moving on to the playoffs (and the group winners receiving a Bye in the quarter-finals). The IEM Oakland format It will be the playoff games that will take place inside of the Oracle Arena, with the group stage matches presumably taking place on-site but without a live audience. Group stage matches will be best-of-one round robin while playoff matches will be best-of-three. Fans who wish to attend IEM Oakland can purchase tickets here.