21.06.20244 min read

BLAST’s 2025 Tournaments

During last week’s BLAST Premier: Spring Final tournament, organizer BLAST announced the schedule, format, and locations for their upcoming 2025 tournaments.

In 2025, they will host a total of 6 tournaments—3 in the first half of the year, and 3 in the second half. These 3 tournaments are named BLAST Bounty, BLAST Open, and BLAST Rivals, and they will introduce quite an interesting format.

The first tournament, Bounty, will feature a total of 32 teams, of which 30 teams will be directly invited based on the Valve Ranking, while the remaining 2 teams will be invited from underrepresented regions to ensure participation from all regions. The tournament will follow a single-elimination format, with the early stages held online, and once 8 teams remain, it will continue in LAN format.

The most interesting aspect of this tournament is that each team will have its own prize money depending on their seeding, and lower-seeded teams will get to choose which higher-seeded team they want to play against. If they win, they will take 50% of the losing team’s prize. This way, regardless of the final placement in the tournament, teams that beat higher-prized teams can collect more money.

As for the next tournament, BLAST Open, 16 teams will compete directly in LAN format, and the format will consist of two groups of 8 teams each playing in a double-elimination format. 3 teams from each group will qualify for the semifinals. The 3 teams that reach the semifinals will then play in a single-elimination format.

Of the 16 teams, 12 will be directly invited based on the Valve Ranking, while the remaining 4 teams will qualify through regional qualifiers called BLAST Rising. BLAST Rising will take place in four regions: North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. It is still unclear what will happen with the teams from the Pacific region—they might possibly participate in the Asia qualifier.

As for the final tournament, BLAST Rivals, it will be the biggest tournament of the season. The top 8 teams from the Valve Ranking will be directly invited. These 8 teams will be split into two groups of 4 and play in a GSL format. From each group, 3 teams will move on to the semifinals, which will be played in a single-elimination format.

The grand final of each of their tournaments will be played in a Bo5 format, and they are planning to allocate a total of $8.5 million USD for the 6 tournaments of 2025. Breaking it down:

Participation rewards: $4 million
Token rewards for successful teams: $2 million
Tournament prize pool: $2.5 million

The participation reward mentioned above will depend on which tournament the team is participating in, as well as their seeding when invited.

For the BLAST Bounty tournament:

If invited with seed 1–8: $40,000
If invited with seed 9–16: $26,250
If invited with seed 17–32: $7,500

This amount is only for participating in the tournament and is separate from the actual prize money won from the competition.

For the BLAST Open tournament:

If invited with seed 1–12: $45,000
The 4 teams entering from regional qualifiers (seeds 13–16) will each receive: $10,000

For the BLAST Rivals tournament, all participating teams will receive: $81,250

As for the token rewards for successful teams, a team that participates in 4 tournaments will receive 1 token, a team that participates in 5 tournaments will receive 2 tokens, and a team that participates in 6 tournaments will receive 3 tokens. Additionally, if a team reaches the second week of either the Bounty or Open tournament, they will receive 1 extra token, and if they win the tournament, they will receive 2 extra tokens.

At the end of the year, the $2 million reward pool will be distributed among teams based on the total number of tokens earned. However, if any team declines an invitation to a tournament and does not participate, they will lose all of their tokens for that year.

AuthorTemujin Batbayar

Analyst from Ulaanbaatar specializing in CS2. Has competed in MESA tournaments, worked with Esports TV during the ESL Pro League, and reviewed both the PGL Major Antwerp 2022 and IEM Katowice 2024. Author of his own player evaluation metrics and known for accurate predictions. Has interviewed s1mple and ZywOo. In esports since the days of CS 1.3.