Tournament organizer ESL has confirmed that IEM Cologne 2021 will be held in a LAN format. Thus, since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, this will be the first major competition where players can meet in person. Since March 2020, almost all significant tournaments have been held online to ensure player safety. The last major LAN-format event was last year's IEM Katowice. Since then, plans to hold an offline tournament have appeared repeatedly, but they could not be realized due to new waves of morbidity.
At the same time, there will be no spectators at IEM Cologne – competitions will be held in studio conditions. The first tournament that spectators will be able to attend should be IEM Winter, scheduled for the first half of December. One of the heads of ESL Michal «Carmac» Blicharz said that the organization is in constant contact with the community and will provide more details on how the competition will be run in the coming days.
IEM Cologne 2021 will take place July 6 – 18. The tournament will feature 24 top teams from around the world, with a prize pool of 1 million dollars. It will begin with a two-day qualifying phase that will feature 16 teams. The top eight will advance to the main stage, where they will meet the top eight ESL Pro Tour (Road to Cologne) ranking leaders.