Yesterday, the Electronic Sports League (ESL) announced the signup and qualifying process for the next season of their high-level competition, Intel Extreme Masters. The new season aims to be a true international competition, as via the upcoming Extreme Masters Los Angeles event, a non-European CS team and WC3 player will qualify for the season. For the Europeans, a series of qualifiers will be held, with the process by which a team or player can take part now explained.

After signing up with the site and filling out some basic information, a player or team will need to sign up for their country's qualifier (three members of a CS squad must be from that country in order to participate). Below are the countries that will have qualifiers for both CS 1.6 and WC3:

Sweden
Norway
Finland
Russia
United Kingdom
Romania
Netherlands
Denmark
Poland
Portugal
Ukraine
Bulgaria

Countries holding Counter-Strike qualifiers only:

Belgium
Turkey
Hungary

Countries holding Warcraft 3 qualifiers only:

Greece
Lithuania
Croatia
Belarus
Czech Republic

In addition, an International Qualifier will be held for teams and players from a European country that has neither a listed national qualifier nor an existing ESL Pro Series league (e.g. Germany). That event will feature both Extreme Masters games. Applications for the qualifiers must be in by the end of the day, CET, October 21st. The season will run through March.

Extreme Masters Qualifier Guide

*Click for larger image



Source: ESL Extreme Masters II