Season six is here!

With the first opening of the new Intel Extreme Masters Season being only six weeks away, we want to announce the new format of the global league of the video game champions. The 2011-2012 season will consist of a series of intercontinental events that lead up to the World Championship.

The road to World Championship 2011-12

Each of the five Global Challenges will have qualifiers on three continents: America, Europe (including Africa), Asia (including Australia), where everybody has the chance to qualify for our tournaments. There will be an overall ranking for all Global Challenges similar to our ESL Go4 Series, where teams and players earn points depending on how well they performed at the Global Challenge.

The qualification to the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship will be conducted in three steps:

Step 1
One highest ranked team or player from each of the three Intel Extreme Masters regions (the Americas, Europe and Africa, Asia and Oceania) will be invited to the World Championship.

Step 2
The top 2 teams or players from every Intel Extreme Masters Global Challenge will be invited to the World Championship.

Step 3
The remaining World Championship slots will go to the highest ranked teams or players in the season (those that haven't been invited in steps 1 and 2).

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Global Challenges
The Counter-Strike 1.6 and League of Legends tournaments in every Global Challenge will each feature 8 teams, while every StarCraft II Global Challenge will have 16 participants.

To earn the right to play in a Global Challenge a team or player will need to go through an online tournament on his home continent.

World Championship
The Intel Extreme Masters World Championship will feature 12 Counter-Strike 1.6 teams, 12 League of Legends teams and 16 StarCraft II players.


The 2011-2012 Intel Extreme Masters season will feature five Global Challenges. Throughout the entire season the best professional gamers compete for a share of 635,000 US Dollar. Season 6 will take off with its first Global Challenge at gamescom 2011 in Cologne (August 17 - 21).

More information on the Intel Extreme Masters 2011-12 season and the Global Challenges will be published soon. Stay tuned for more updates to come!