BLAST sets a six-event CS2 circuit for 2027 with an Open in Rio

Sixteen teams instead of 32, and no online rounds at all: the Bounty, the tournament that opens BLAST's 2027 calendar, is the part of the organizer's Counter-Strike circuit that changes most in 2027. BLAST announced the whole of that circuit on Saturday, February 28, 2026, as reported by HLTV the same day: six events between January and November, a total investment raised to US$10 million, and a first host city, Rio de Janeiro, for the third Open in October.

The announcement comes more than ten months before the first date it sets, January 11, 2027. It was made under a slogan HLTV quoted as more LAN, more money and more locations. A LAN is an event where the teams play in the same place, as opposed to the online rounds the Bounty has used until now.

Six events from January to November

The 2027 calendar keeps the three tournament names BLAST already uses: Bounty, Open and Rivals. There are two Bounty events, three Opens and one Rivals.

Five of the six events fill a two-week block. Rivals, the last of the year, takes one week.

The mix of three Opens and one Rivals was already known, HLTV wrote. BLAST had said so earlier, after Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike 2, declined to grant an exception that would have let the organizer run two Rivals events of the wildcard type without meeting the usual requirements. In 2026 the circuit still has two of them: according to an HLTV article of January 3, Rivals Season 1 is played from April 29 to May 4 at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, and Season 2 from November 8 to 15 in Hong Kong, with eight teams and a pool of US$1,000,000, of which US$650,000 for the clubs and US$350,000 for the players. The series began in 2025, and the Hong Kong event is its fourth tournament.

The Bounty is cut in half and moves fully to LAN

The Bounty is a tournament built around a mechanism of its own. HLTV's guide to the 2026 Season 1 edition, published on January 12, described it. Every team is given a bounty, a sum of money, based on its seed. In each round the lower-seeded teams choose their opponent among the higher-seeded ones. The winner of a match collects half of the loser's bounty in cash, and the other half is added to its own bounty for the next round.

That edition had 32 teams, selected from the global ranking of December 2025. Two rounds were played online from January 13 to 18, and only the eight teams left traveled to BLAST's studio in Malta for the last stage, from January 22 to 25: two rounds of best-of-three matches, then the final. PARIVISION won it, beating Falcons 3-0 in a best-of-five final, a series won with three maps, on January 25.

In 2027 the online stage disappears. The Bounty becomes a 16-team event played entirely on LAN, HLTV reported.

The entry route changes with it. Twelve teams are invited directly through the VRS, the Valve Regional Standings. The four other places come from regional qualifiers in Europe, North America, South America and Asia.

Why the qualifiers count toward Valve's rule

Those qualifiers do a second job. Each of the four invites four teams, HLTV wrote, and this is how BLAST meets a requirement set by Valve: a tournament of the top tier must invite at least 20 teams. Twelve direct invitations and sixteen qualifier invitations make 28 invitations, for an event with 16 places.

The structure is the one the Open already uses. BLAST Open Rotterdam, the first Open of 2026, shows it in practice. According to HLTV's report of February 9 on its invitations, the event has 16 teams: the top 12 of the global list of the February standings, and four winners of qualifiers the organizer calls Rising: Ninjas in Pyjamas for Europe, 9z for South America, NRG for North America and TYLOO for Asia. It runs from March 18 to 29, starting with a double-elimination group stage at BLAST's studios in Copenhagen. The best six teams then move to the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam for the playoffs.

In Rotterdam, every one of the twelve invited teams accepted, HLTV noted, and G2, 13th at the cut-off date of February 2, stayed outside. The Bounty's 2026 Season 1 edition, with its 32 places, had seen MOUZ, The MongolZ and G2 decline their invitations, according to HLTV's guide to that event.

Rio de Janeiro, the first city named

Only one of the six events has a city so far. The third Open, from October 4 to 17, goes to Rio de Janeiro. It is the first BLAST event in Brazil since BLAST Pro Series São Paulo in 2019, HLTV pointed out.

The first Bounty, from January 11 to 24, is placed in Europe, with no city given. The four other events have dates only.

The change of format also changes who travels. A Bounty played fully on LAN brings all sixteen of its teams to one place, where the 2026 Season 1 edition gathered only eight of its 32 teams in Malta.

US$10 million, and where it goes

BLAST put a number on the season: US$10 million of investment for the year, against US$8.5 million in each of 2025 and 2026, according to HLTV. That is US$1.5 million more.

The organizer split the sum into four lines. Prize money takes US$3 million. Team payment, also called club share, takes US$4.5 million. Acceptance fees take US$1.8 million, and a fund called team experience US$0.7 million. The four lines add up to US$10 million.

The first two lines are the ones a result decides. Each of the six events carries a purse of US$1.25 million that counts toward the VRS, divided between prize money and team payment. Six times US$1.25 million is US$7.5 million, the sum of the US$3 million and the US$4.5 million. For comparison, HLTV gave the pool of the 2026 Season 1 Bounty as US$1.15 million, of which US$500,000 in prize money and US$650,000 in club share.

The acceptance fees are spread over the six events and depend on a team's place in the VRS on the day it is invited, a mechanism BLAST already used in 2025. The team experience fund, US$700,000, is set aside for better lodging and travel conditions at the events, to ease the strain of a busy global calendar, HLTV reported.

The end of the Frequent Flyer Programme

One line of the previous model is gone. BLAST is dropping its Frequent Flyer Programme, a reward calculated over the whole year, and will pay teams event by event only, HLTV reported.

The programme paid organizations for coming back. HLTV described its 2025 edition on December 10, 2025, when BLAST released the final standings: a pot of US$2,000,000, paid on top of fees and prize money, and shared according to units earned over the calendar year. A team earned its first unit after attending four events and could reach four for playing in six. Extra units went to teams that reached the second week of a Bounty or an Open, and winning an event was worth two.

Presence weighed heavily in that count. Vitality and Spirit, who each attended all six BLAST events of 2025, finished with 12 and 11 units. Vitality reached the second week at four events and won two. The two organizations received US$461,538 and US$423,077, which is US$884,615 together, close to 45 per cent of the pot, according to the same article.

From 2027 nothing is tied to a full season. What a team earns from BLAST will depend on the events it enters, its ranking on the day of the invitation and its results there.

A calendar shared with PGL and ESL

BLAST is not alone on these dates. Four of its 2027 events clash with tournaments on the schedule of PGL, HLTV wrote, without naming them. The site described PGL as an organizer that returned to the scene in 2025 and is seeking a larger share of the market. It noted that with rewards paid per event, BLAST's model no longer penalizes a team for skipping a tournament the way the yearly programme did.

PGL's own plans reach well past 2027. On February 22, HLTV reported that the mayor of Cluj-Napoca had announced PGL events in his city for 2027, 2028 and 2029, with a date block of February 13 to 21, 2027, for the first of them. That block falls between BLAST's opening Bounty, which ends on January 24, and its first Open, which starts on March 15.

Neither PGL nor ESL had announced its investment or its tournament details for 2027 when BLAST published its own, according to HLTV. On BLAST's own calendar, five of the six events have no city yet.

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