Table of Contents
Updated Jan. 4
It’s a new year, which means a new slate of esports tournaments and events to look forward to. The Counter-Strike 2 and Call of Duty calendars are already pretty robust, and we know of a handful of events in League of Legends, VALORANT and Rainbow Six. We’re still waiting to see what’s on deck for Rocket League, Halo, Dota 2 and Overwatch 2. For now, here’s a preview of some of the biggest esports tournaments and events in 2024.
CDL Major 1
Call of Duty
Jan. 25-28 — Boston, United States
Photo credit: SlasheR / Instagram
The first Call of Duty League Major of the year will take place in Boston. A couple weeks of qualifiers have already taken place in December, and there will be two more weeks of qualifiers in January leading into the Major. Unsurprisingly, the always-in-contention Atlanta FaZe and defending champion New York Subliners are both undefeated in qualifiers. Surprisingly, the revamped and rebranded Miami Heretics also are 3-0. All 12 CDL teams will be at the Major, but records during qualifiers will determine seeding.
Read more: Call of Duty League 2024 season preview: Schedule, rosters and more
IEM Katowice
Counter-Strike 2
Jan. 31 – Feb.11 — Katowice, Poland
Photo credit: Helena Kristiansson / ESL
IEM Katowice is always the first big Counter-Strike tournament of the year and one of the most prestigious annual CS tournaments. With CS2 releasing in fall 2023, this will be the first IEM Katowice in which teams will compete in CS2 rather than CS:GO. G2 Esports, the defending Katowice champions, headline the list of eight directly qualified teams. Recent CS2 champions FaZe Clan and Team Vitality are among the eight, and Complexity Gaming will be the sole Americas representative among the directly qualified teams.
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Joining these teams will be another 16 teams who have qualified for the play-in stage. Cloud9, Virtus.pro, Heroic, FURIA, GamerLegion, ENCE and Astralis are among the more notable play-in teams. Keep an eye on The MongolZ, an organization-less Mongolian team that finished in the top 12 as IHC Esports last year. Team Liquid, a perennial North American contender, is notably absent, but M80 will be carrying the NA banner alongside Complexity at this tournament.
Six Invitational
Rainbow Six Siege
Feb. 13-25 — São Paolo, Brazil
Photo credit: Ubisoft
World championships tend to happen at the end of the year in esports, but like American football, Rainbow Six esports always kicks off the year by crowning a champion. Europe’s G2 Esports are the 2023 Six Invitational champions, and they will be in attendance to defend their title. Besides G2, the other European contender is Virtus.pro who won both stages of the Europe League last year. The favorites, however, are w7m esports, who finished second at SI 2023 and won both Majors in 2023. In fact, the top two seeded teams at the first ever Six Invitational held in Brazil are two Brazilian teams: w7m and FaZe Clan.
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Soniqs are the top-seeded North American team, but DarkZero Esports and Spacestation Gaming both performed better at the most recent Major. While the champion is likely to come from either Brazil, Europe or North America, keep an eye on Japan’s SCARZ and the United Arab Emirates’ Geekay Esports, who both had top eight finishes at Majors last year and could pull off some upsets.
Masters Madrid
VALORANT
March 14-23 — Madrid, Spain
Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / Riot Games
The first VALORANT Champions Tour Masters event of the year will take place in March following competition in the Americas, Europe, Pacific and China regions the first couple months of the year. Last year, Fnatic, Evil Geniuses, LOUD and Paper Rex were championship contenders. This year, three of those four teams should be in the mix in Madrid, but it remains to be seen how reigning world champs Evil Geniuses will fare in light of the org’s financial struggles and roster breakup in the offseason. Without the championship roster together in 2024, a new North American team will likely emerge as a contender in Madrid.
Copenhagen Major
Counter-Strike 2
March 17-31 — Copenhagen, Denmark
Photo credit: Blast
The first CS2 Major of the year will take place in Denmark. We’ll find out who the contenders will be after the results of IEM Katowice and the Blast spring season. Team Vitality are the reigning Major champions and have been one of the more dominant teams since CS2 released despite a revamped roster. Frenchmen Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut and Israeli Lotan “Spinx” Giladi remain from that Major-winning roster and have been joined by Shahar “flameZ” Shushan and William “mezii” Merriman. Vitality figure to be one of the favorites at the Major as well as G2 and FaZe Clan.
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CDL Major 2
Call of Duty
March 21-24 — Miami, United States
If the Miami Heretics continue winning like they have during Major 1 qualifiers, then the crowd should be hyped up as they host their first-ever Major. We’ll see who the contenders are after the results of Major 1.
League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational
League of Legends
May 1-19 — Chengdu, China
Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / Riot Games
MSI 2024 will take place in May like it usually does after the conclusion of the spring seasons of the regional League of Legends circuits around the globe. Riot Games is returning to China for this event, which makes sense since the country hasn’t hosted MSI since 2016 and Worlds since 2020. Riot announced some changes this year, namely that the winner of MSI will automatically qualify for Worlds and give their region an extra slot at the world championship. Additionally, the second-best performing region also will earn another slot at Worlds for their region. Although Korean teams have won each of the last two world championships, Chinese teams have won MSI each of the past three years. Defending MSI champ JD Gaming figures to be one of the favorites if they qualify as will whichever other teams qualify from China and Korea.
CDL Major 3
Call of Duty
May 16-19 — Toronto, Canada
Toronto will once again host a CDL Major, and the Toronto Ultra should be a contender to lift a Major trophy at home.
Blast Spring Final
Counter-Strike 2
June 12-16 — London, England
Photo credit: HLTV
Team Vitality beat FaZe Clan in the last Blast final in the fall, and both teams could be in the mix to lift the spring Blast trophy. We’ll have a better sense of the contenders after IEM Katowice and the Copenhagen Major.
Read more: FaZe Clan win first big CS2 tournament at IEM Sydney
CDL Major 4
Call of Duty
June 20-23 — Charlotte, United States
The newly relocated Royal Ravens will host the final CDL Major of the year. We’ll see who the contenders are after the results of the first three Majors.
CDL Champs
Call of Duty
Location and dates TBD
Photo credit: Call of Duty League
We don’t know the dates or location of CDL Champs this year, but it’ll likely take place in July and/or August. As for a location, Los Angeles has frequently been a host, but Champs was held in Vegas last year. The New York Subliners are the reigning CDL Champs.
IEM Cologne
Counter-Strike 2
Aug. 7-18 — Cologne, Germany
Next to the Majors and IEM Katowice, IEM Cologne — known affectionately as the Cathedral of Counter-Strike — is one of the marquee annual events on the CS calendar. G2 Esports are the defending Cologne champs.
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VALORANT Champions
VALORANT
Location and dates TBD
Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / Riot Games
We don’t yet know when or where VALORANT Champions will be held this year, but August-September is the likely time frame given the cadence of the VALORANT Champions Tour season and Riot Games typically scheduling League of Legends Worlds in October. Evil Geniuses are the defending champions.
Blast Fall Final
Counter-Strike 2
Sept. 23-29 — Copenhagen, Denmark
Copenhagen will get their second big CS event of 2024 with the Blast Fall Final coming to town six months after a Major. Team Vitality are the defending Blast Fall champions.
League of Legends Worlds
League of Legends
Final Nov. 2 in London, England
Photo credit: Colin Young-Wolff / Riot Games
We know the Worlds 2024 final will be at The O2 in London, but we don’t know where the rest of Worlds will take place. It could be in locations across the United Kingdom or perhaps across Europe as was the case in 2019.
T1 are the defending champions. T1 have been one of the top teams in the world the past two years and will be running it back with the same roster in 2024, including legendary player Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see them at The O2. If not T1, then perhaps another Korean team, and certainly the top Chinese teams will be contenders to lift the Summoner’s Cup in London. In 2019 when Worlds was held in Europe, G2 Esports reached the final. They’re again projected to be one of the top European teams in 2024, but we’ll see if they or another European team have what it takes to make a run on home soil.
Blast World Final
Counter-Strike 2
Nov. 11-17 — Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Photo credit: HLTV
Abu Dhabi will get the Blast World Final for the third year in a row. Team Vitality are the reigning champs.
Shanghai Major
VALORANT
Dec. 1-15 — Shanghai, China
December is typically a quiet month devoid of major esports events, but in 2024 we will get a Counter-Strike Major to close out the year. To add a little extra intrigue, this will be the first Major that will take place in China. Unfortunately for viewers in the region, Asian teams have never been among the top CS teams, but it’ll be fun to see which Asian teams qualify and if they will benefit from a home crowd buff.
Lead photo credit: Ubisoft