BLAST takes a 2027 Counter-Strike 2 Open to Ulaanbaatar in May

Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, has a place on the 2027 Counter-Strike 2 calendar. BLAST, one of the organizers of the game's biggest events, has announced that the second Open of its 2027 season will be played there from May 10 to 23, 2027, HLTV reported on Tuesday, July 14, 2026.

The event brings 16 teams to the city for a prize pool of US$1.25 million. HLTV describes it as BLAST's first tier-one venture into Mongolia, where the organizer had co-hosted a qualifier before.

BLAST announcement as reported by HLTV, July 14, 2026; the day count includes both dates.

A first for the Mongolian capital

Tier one is the label the scene gives to the top level of Counter-Strike events, the ones that gather the best teams in the world. In its summary of the announcement, HLTV wrote that the Mongolian capital is set to host a tier-one event for the first time; in the report itself, it called the event BLAST's first tier-one venture into the country.

The organizer is not a stranger to the city. In 2025, BLAST co-hosted a qualifying event in Mongolia for BLAST Open London, one of its tournaments of that year, according to the same report. A qualifier is a smaller competition that hands out places in a larger event. That event handed out places for London; the Open brings the whole field of the main event to Mongolia.

BLAST presented the choice as part of a wider plan for its 2027 season. In the statement quoted by HLTV, the organizer said that the move reflects a wider direction for its premier circuit in 2027: taking major events beyond familiar destinations.

The announcement gives the city and the dates. HLTV's report names no arena, no ticket sale date and no local partner.

Who will travel there

The field is set by two routes. Eleven of the 16 teams are invited directly through the Valve Regional Standings, the VRS. The VRS is the ranking published by Valve, the developer of Counter-Strike 2, which organizers use to decide whom they invite. The five other places come from qualifiers held in four regions: Asia, Europe, North America and South America.

That mix is not quite the one described in February. When BLAST announced the 2027 circuit on February 28, HLTV reported that the new 16-team Bounty would use 12 direct invitations from the VRS and four regional qualifiers, in Europe, North America, South America and Asia, each of them inviting four teams, a structure the report said matches the Open's. The same report said that this is how BLAST meets Valve's requirement that a tier-one event invite at least 20 teams.

For Ulaanbaatar, the July announcement gives 11 invitations and five qualifier places across the same four regions. It does not say which region receives the extra place, nor how many teams each qualifier invites.

The 2027 circuit, city by city

Ulaanbaatar is the latest city on a calendar that BLAST has been filling in stages. In February the organizer gave six events and their dates, with only one city, Rio de Janeiro. In April it added Singapore and kept the first Bounty in Malta. In July, Mongolia.

The dates themselves are not new. The February calendar already listed an Open Season 2 from May 10 to 23, 2027, with no location beside it. What the July announcement adds is the place: the second Open of the year now has a city, and the slot it fills was fixed more than four months earlier.

The Bounty, the tournament that opens the season, stays in Malta. HLTV's report of April 10 said that the first Bounty would continue there. The Bounty and the Open are two of BLAST's tournament brands; Rivals is the third, a smaller event with eight teams in 2026.

Rio de Janeiro has the third Open, from October 4 to 17. When BLAST named the city in February, HLTV noted that it would be the organizer's first return to Brazil since BLAST Pro Series Sao Paulo in 2019.

The July report also lists Hong Kong among the destinations BLAST has already announced for 2027, beside Rio de Janeiro, Singapore and Malta. The calendar it prints does not place Hong Kong next to any of the six events, and two of them, the second Bounty and Rivals, still have no location.

Asia takes two of the three Opens

With Singapore in March and Ulaanbaatar in May, the first two Opens of 2027 are both played in Asia. Of the three cities named for the Opens so far, only Rio de Janeiro lies outside the continent.

Singapore is a city BLAST knows. HLTV recalled on April 10 that it hosted the organizer's World Final in 2024, an event the site described as sold-out. The city-state has a second date in the meantime: it hosts a Counter-Strike 2 Major, the most important kind of tournament in the game, run by PGL in November 2026.

Hong Kong is the other Asian stop BLAST has used. According to an HLTV report of January 3, 2026, Rivals Season 2 is played there from November 8 to 15, 2026, with eight teams and a pool of US$1,000,000, the last three days at the AsiaWorld-Expo. The pool of that event is split in two, US$650,000 for the clubs and US$350,000 for the players. The 2025 edition in the city was won by FURIA, who beat Falcons 3-1 in the grand final.

The MongolZ, a Mongolian team, played three finals in a row in the second half of 2025 and won the Esports World Cup that year, HLTV wrote on July 12, 2026. The same report described a harder 2026: the team dropped from a regular place in the world's top five to the top ten, and it was ranked 12th by HLTV on July 6. It was rebuilding its lineup two days before the Ulaanbaatar announcement, after losing mzinho to BC.Game and moving cobrazera to the bench. BLAST's announcement does not mention the team, and the five qualifier places are open to every team of each region.

What the purse and the fees look like

The US$1.25 million of Ulaanbaatar is the standard purse of a BLAST event in 2027. On February 28 the organizer said that each of its six events would carry US$1.25 million counting toward the VRS, divided between prize money, paid according to results, and team payment, also called club share, a sum paid to the organizations that take part. Six events at US$1.25 million make US$7.5 million, which is exactly the US$3 million of prize money and the US$4.5 million of team payment that BLAST lists for the year.

That is part of a larger budget. BLAST announced US$10 million of investment for 2027, up from US$8.5 million in each of 2025 and 2026, in four lines: US$3 million of prize money, US$4.5 million of team payment, US$1.8 million of acceptance fees and US$0.7 million for what it calls team experience, set aside for better lodging and travel conditions at events.

The US$1.8 million of acceptance fees is spread across the six events, and the amount depends on a team's VRS standing when it receives its invitation, a mechanism the organizer already used in 2025. BLAST is also moving away from its Frequent Flyer Programme, a year-long reward program: from 2027 teams are rewarded event by event. For Singapore, HLTV reported in April an acceptance pool of US$400,000, which would be US$25,000 per team if split equally among 16. The July report gives no acceptance pool for Ulaanbaatar.

The other two large organizers have announced their own 2027 budgets. HLTV's April report gave PGL's investment as US$11 million and ESL's as US$10.45 million, not counting US$1 million set aside for ESL's Grand Slam.

May 2027 on the calendar

The Ulaanbaatar dates sit in a crowded spring. ESL has published its own 2027 calendar, and on July 1, 2026, HLTV reported that IEM Brazil, a 16-team ESL event worth US$1,000,000 whose host city has not been named, will run from May 3 to 9, 2027. That event ends on a Sunday. BLAST Open Ulaanbaatar starts the next day, Monday, May 10.

ESL's spring holds more. The same calendar places IEM Krakow from January 27 to February 7, ESL Pro League Season 25 in Saudi Arabia from March 6 to 14, and IEM USA from April 5 to 11.

The pattern of overlap was there from the start. When BLAST published its circuit in February, HLTV counted four of its 2027 events clashing with PGL's circuit, and in April it reported that Open Singapore would run at the same time as a PGL event in March. HLTV noted in February that PGL has been pursuing a larger share of the market since its return in 2025.

Before Mongolia, BLAST's 2027 season opens with the Bounty in Malta on January 11, and its first Open is played in Singapore from March 15 to 28. Ulaanbaatar follows a little over six weeks after Singapore ends.

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