BLAST takes the first Open of its 2027 CS2 season to Singapore

BLAST will take the first Open of its 2027 Counter-Strike 2 season to Singapore in March 2027, HLTV reported on Friday, April 10, 2026. BLAST Open Singapore joins Rio de Janeiro as a named host of a 2027 Open, and it comes with a figure for the acceptance fees that replace the organizer's year-long Frequent Flyer Programme: a pool of US$400,000.

The city is not new to the organizer or to the game. Singapore hosted BLAST's World Final in 2024, which HLTV described as sold out, and in November 2026 it welcomes the first Counter-Strike 2 Major held in Southeast Asia, run by PGL. The Open of March 2027 will follow that Major by little more than three months.

HLTV, April 10, 2026, reporting BLAST's announcement of Open Singapore.

Season 1 of the 2027 Opens

The event is Season 1 of BLAST Open 2027. BLAST has announced the month, March; the exact dates and the arena have not been given. The calendar BLAST published on February 28, as reported by HLTV that day, placed Open Season 1 from Monday, March 15 to Sunday, March 28, 2027.

An Open is one of the three tournament names BLAST uses for Counter-Strike, beside the Bounty and Rivals. Next year there will be three Opens instead of two, HLTV noted. Singapore takes the first, in March. Rio de Janeiro takes the third, from October 4 to 17, BLAST's first event in Brazil since 2019. The second, set for May 10 to 23, had no city at the time of the Singapore announcement.

The rest of the organizer's year takes shape around those dates. The Bounty, the tournament that opens BLAST's 2027 calendar from January 11 to 24, stays in Malta for its first season, HLTV reported on April 10. A second Bounty runs from August 30 to September 12, and Rivals closes the year from November 8 to 14.

The shape of the year also reflects a decision by Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike 2. HLTV reported on February 28 that BLAST runs three Opens and a single Rivals, and that Valve no longer allows the two wildcard-style Rivals events BLAST had planned, because the organizer does not meet the requirements for them. The Bounty changes as well: it drops from 32 teams to 16 and is played entirely on LAN, with all teams gathered in one place, where it used to be online until the last eight. Its entry route combines twelve direct invitations from the ranking with four regional qualifiers, in Europe, North America, South America and Asia.

Acceptance fees replace the Frequent Flyer Programme

The money changes too. BLAST has canceled its Frequent Flyer Programme in favor of acceptance fees from 2027 onwards, HLTV wrote. The program was a year-long scheme; from 2027, teams are rewarded entirely event by event, as HLTV reported on February 28.

On February 28, BLAST set aside US$1.8 million of acceptance fees for the year, spread across its six events and based on each team's position in the Valve Regional Standings (VRS), Valve's ranking of teams, at the time of the invitation. BLAST had already used that link to the ranking in 2025.

Open Singapore now shows its share. Its pool of US$400,000 works out at US$25,000 per team if divided equally among its participants, HLTV calculated. Because the fees depend on each team's place in the VRS, that equal split is an average, not what every team receives.

Set against the year, the Singapore pool is above the average. An even spread of US$1.8 million over six events would give US$300,000 per event. Open Singapore's US$400,000 is close to 22 percent of the year's acceptance fees.

The acceptance fees are one of four lines in BLAST's 2027 budget. On February 28, the organizer put its investment for the year at US$10 million, up from US$8.5 million in each of 2025 and 2026: US$3 million of prize money, US$4.5 million of team payment, also called club share, US$1.8 million of acceptance fees and US$0.7 million for what it calls team experience, for better lodging and travel. Each event carries a purse of US$1.25 million that counts toward the VRS, divided between prize money and team payment.

Three organizers, three budgets

In its April 10 report, HLTV set BLAST's US$10 million beside US$11 million for PGL and US$10.45 million for ESL, the latter excluding ESL's US$1 million Grand Slam.

When BLAST published its circuit on February 28, neither PGL nor ESL had revealed its investment or tournament details for 2027, HLTV noted then. Six weeks later, the site could set a figure for each of them beside BLAST's.

The gap between the three is narrow: US$1 million separates PGL's figure from BLAST's, and US$450,000 separates ESL's from BLAST's.

How an Open is played

BLAST said on February 28 that the format of the Open would not change in 2027. The 2026 edition in Rotterdam shows how it works. According to HLTV's report of February 9, BLAST Open Rotterdam, from March 18 to 29, 2026, gathered 16 teams. Twelve were invited directly from the global list of the February VRS, with a cut-off date of February 2, and all twelve accepted: Vitality, FURIA, Falcons, MOUZ, PARIVISION, FaZe, Spirit, Natus Vincere, The MongolZ, Aurora, Liquid and B8. G2, 13th at the cut-off, missed out. The four other places went to the winners of BLAST's regional qualifiers, called Rising: Ninjas in Pyjamas for Europe, 9z for South America, NRG for North America and TYLOO for Asia.

The event is played in two places. In Rotterdam, the group stage was a double-elimination bracket, in which a team is out after its second defeat, played at BLAST's studios in Copenhagen. The best six teams then moved to the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam for the playoffs.

Valve sets a condition on that structure. A tournament of the top tier must invite at least 20 teams, and BLAST's invitation routes are built to meet it, HLTV reported on February 28. For the 2027 Bounty, the four regional qualifiers do that job, beside the twelve direct invitations.

HLTV's figure of US$25,000 per team corresponds to a field of 16, the size of the 2026 Opens: US$400,000 divided by 16 gives US$25,000.

Singapore's record with Counter-Strike

BLAST knows the city. Its World Final 2024 was played in Singapore, and HLTV recalled it as a sold-out event. G2 won it by beating Spirit 3-0 in a best-of-five final, a series won by the first team to take three maps: 13-7 on Mirage, 13-5 on Anubis and 13-7 on Dust2, HLTV reported on November 3, 2024. G2 had beaten Spirit earlier in the same event too, and held an 8-1 record on maps against them since the players' break of that year. It was G2's third trophy of 2024, and m0NESY finished the final with a rating of 1.45.

The next Counter-Strike event in the city is bigger still. Sheep Esports reported on December 8, 2025 that PGL will organize the second Counter-Strike 2 Major of 2026 in Singapore, ending on Sunday, December 13; HLTV gave November 24 as its first day on April 9, when PGL set the date of its invitation cut-off. The Major gathers 32 teams for a prize pool of US$1,250,000 across three stages, with the last four days played before a crowd at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. In December, Sheep Esports reported that tickets would go on sale in the following months.

It will be the first Counter-Strike 2 Major in Southeast Asia, and PGL's fifth Counter-Strike Major, the fourth in the last five years, after Krakow, Stockholm, Antwerp and Copenhagen, according to Sheep Esports. PGL also knows the city from Dota 2: it ran the Singapore Major in 2021 and The International 2022 there. The organizer presented Singapore as the next natural step in its project of bringing top-level Counter-Strike 2 to more regions and communities.

A March shared with PGL

BLAST will not have March to itself. Open Singapore runs at the same time as a PGL event in March, HLTV noted. HLTV had already counted four clashes between BLAST's 2027 calendar and PGL's schedule when the circuit was announced on February 28, describing PGL as an organizer that has sought a larger share of the market since its return in 2025.

HLTV wrote at the time that BLAST's event-by-event incentive model appeared to accept that competitive pressure. The Singapore announcement confirms the overlap for the first Open of the year.

What comes next

BLAST has not yet given the venue, the exact dates or the list of invited teams for Open Singapore. BLAST has said the Open keeps its format, which in 2026 meant twelve direct invitations from the VRS and four places from the Rising qualifiers.

Before that, Singapore hosts the PGL Major from November 24 to December 13, 2026. BLAST's own 2027 season begins with the Bounty in Malta from January 11, and the Opens follow in Singapore in March, in a city still to be named in May, and in Rio de Janeiro in October.

The .esports registry publishes Esports Observer, so the whole scene can read its news for free.