In light of the overlap with the tournament schedule, PGL has canceled its event planned for October 2026. With the tight tournament schedule from the likes of BLAST, ESL, and PGL, it has become increasingly difficult to find slots for a tier-1 CS2 event without reshuffling the whole calendar.
The unnamed PGL event was planned for the same time as ESL Pro League, arguably the longest-running tier-1 event, despite the overhaul in format in the latter iterations of the event. PGL has been increasing its investments in CS2 tournaments over the past few seasons and has promised to increase them in the coming year.
At the start of the year, PGL revealed a calendar flooded with tier-1 events, and given the booming scene of CS2, there is no shortage of CS2 tournaments for 2026, to say the least.
ESL Pro League is arguably one of the most important events that teams pay special attention to, given its role in getting the Intel Grand Slam. In the event of an overlap, teams may skip the PGL event for the month-long ESL event.
Goes without saying that PGL understood the impact that ESL might have on the event, and the lack of top teams will impact the reach of the tournaments by big margins. Having altered the schedule, not only does PGL secure the participation of most teams, but fans will get to enjoy one premier event at a time.