New CS:GO Season Starts Tomorrow with BLAST Spring Groups

Tomorrow marks the start of the new CS:GO season. It will be the first day of this year’s first big event – BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2022. There twelve teams will compete for a $177,500 prize pool and six invites to the seasonal finale.

For many teams this event will be the first chance to try out their line-ups, especially for Evil Geniuses, who recently welcomed three new members – Jacky "Stewie2K" Yip, Timothy "autimatic" Ta and William "RUSH" Wierzba. The event will also be a big challenge for G2 Esports, who recently signed former OG captain Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen and 16-years-old Russian player Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov, who earlier represented NAVI Junior. It will also be also the first time we will see Nicholas "nitr0" Cannella competing since late 2020, as recently he returned to Team Liquid.

Contrary to the previous seasons, now the event will feature three stages. The first one is the Group Stage, which will be played from January 28th to January 30th. Twelve participants have been split into three groups with double-elimination brackets and best-of-one series, with each group happening in different days. The teams have been seeded as follows (UK time):

Group A, January 28th

• 2:00 PM: G2 vs Complexity
• 3:00 PM: BIG vs NIP

Group B, January 29th

• 2:00 PM: NAVI vs MIBR
• 3:00 PM: Astralis vs OG

Group C, January 30th

• 2:00 PM: Vitality vs EG
• 3:00 PM: FaZe vs Liquid

The group stage will determine the teams’ seedings in the next, Play-In Stage that is scheduled for February 3rd – 5th. It will feature three single-elimination gauntlets with best-of-three matches. The winners of the groups will start in the finals, the runner-ups – in the semifinals. The best team of each gauntlet will qualify for the Spring Finals, while the fourth placed teams will advance to the Spring Showdown.

The rest of the teams will compete in the Last Chance Stage on February 6th. They will face each other in best-of-three series; the winner of each match will qualify for the seasonal finals, while the losers will advance to the Showdown.