IEM Katowice 2023: G2 Esports win title

The 2023 edition of IEM Katowice is officially in the rearview mirror. Here’s our full recap of the event if you missed any of the action.

IEM Katowice is one of the biggest and most iconic tournaments on the CS:GO calendar, only rivaled by the Majors and IEM Cologne. The 2023 edition brought elite-level Counter-Strike to the Spodek Arena, where the winner walked away with the lion’s share of a $1 million prize purse and a ticket to IEM Cologne.

The tournament featured 24 teams from all over the world, including 17 of the top 20 teams in the rankings. Eight teams were directly invited to the group stage, while the other 16 duked it out in the Play-In stage for the final eight spots in the main tournament.

G2 Esports picked up where they had left off in 2022 and won IEM Katowice with a spectacular dream run. The BLAST Premier World champions lost just one map en route to the title, in the 3-1 victory against Heroic in the grand final.

Justin ‘jks’ Savage made history as the official tournament MVP and the only player in Katowice history to win back-to-back events with different teams. In 2022, he played as a stand-in for FaZe as the team won the title after beating G2 in the final.

The biggest disappointment of IEM Katowice was without a doubt Cloud9, who did not win a single match in their first outing with Timur ‘buster’ Tulepov. FaZe, the defending champions, also cut a frustrated figure after being denied a spot in the playoffs by Team Liquid.

Here are all the details you need to know about IEM Katowice, including the full schedule, lineups, and prize money.

Contents

• Results
• Teams and players
• Final standings

IEM Katowice 2023: Results

IEM Katowice began with the Play-In Stage, where 16 teams competed in a double-elimination bracket. The opening round was played in a best-of-one format, while the remaining matches were best-of-three series.

The top eight teams advanced to the group stage, where they joined the eight teams invited by ESL based on the world ranking. These 16 teams were split into two GSL groups, with three teams per group advancing to the single-elimination playoffs, which were played at the Spodek Arena. The tournament culminated in a best-of-five grand final.

Playoffs (February 10-12)

Day 1: February 10

Day 2: February 11

Day 3: February 12

Group Stage (February 4-7)

Day 1: February 4

Day 2: February 5

Day 3: February 6

Day 4: February 7

Play-In (February 1-3)

Day 1: February 1

Day 2: February 2

Day 3: February 3

IEM Katowice 2023: Teams & players

IEM Katowice 2023 featured top teams from Europe, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. The majority of the participating teams were determined by ESL’s world ranking, with only two coming from qualifying events (Fnatic through winning Elisa Masters Espoo and Permitta by topping ESL Mistrzostwa Polski Autumn).

The Polish event was the first opportunity to see some of the new teams in action. Those were the cases of Cloud9, who placed 13th-16th in their first event with buster, and IEM Rio Major winners Outsiders, who acquitted themselves well after adding Aleksandr ‘⁠KaiR0N-‘ Anashkin, reaching the playoffs. Sprout will also attend their first LAN tournament with Romanian AWPer Adrian ‘XELLOW’ Guță.

Stephanie Lieske for ESL

buster had a rough start to his Cloud9 tenure

IEM Katowice also marked Kristian ‘k0nfig’ Wienecke’s debut for NIP. In their first tournament with the former Astralis rifler, who replaced Hampus ‘hampus’ Poser, the Ninjas went out 13th-16th after losing to Vitality and Outsiders.

Invited Teams

Play-In Teams

IEM Katowice 2023: Final standings

Below you can find the prize pool distribution and the final standings.