ESL One Cologne 2015
| 2015 | |
 |
|
| Tournament information | |
|---|---|
| Sport | Counter-Strike: Global Offensive |
| Location | Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany |
| Dates | August 14, 2015–August 18, 2015 |
| Administrator(s) | Electronic Sports League (ESL) |
|
Tournament
format(s) |
GSL group stage format (4 groups with 4 teams) Eight team single-elimination playoff |
| Venue | Lanxess Arena |
| Teams | 16 teams |
| Purse | $250,000 USD |
| Final positions | |
| Champions |
 Fnatic
|
| 1st runners-up |
 Team EnVyUs
|
| 2nd runners-up |
 Virtus.pro Team SoloMid
|
|
|
|
ESL One Cologne 2015 was the sixth Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major that was held from August 14–18, 2015 at the Lanxess Arena in Cologne. It was organized by Electronic Sports League. The Cologne event was the first ESL tournament that required competitors to take drug tests, which all came up negative. The tournament had a total prize pool of $250,000 USD. The online livestream was viewed by around 27 million viewers with a peak of 1.3 million concurrent viewers.
There were qualifiers for the event.
Fnatic was the winner of the event after beating Team EnVyUs 16-7 in the finals on Cobblestone (de_cbble). Fnatic's Freddy "KRiMZ" Johansson scored a quad-kill in the finals against EnVyUs to help win the tournament.
The top eight teams of the ESL One Katowice 2015 qualified as Legends. In addition, four team from the European Qualifier, two teams from the Asian qualifier, and two teams from the North American qualifier were the "Challengers" for the tournament.
Teams will be split up into four groups. All group matches are best of 1. The highest seed will play the lowest seed in each group and the second and third seeds will play against each other. The winner of those two matches will play to determine which team moves on to the Playoffs; the loser of this match receives a "high seed" in the second group stage. The two losers from the first matches play as the "low seeds" in the second group stage, while the high seed gets a bye. The winner between the two losing teams play against the high seed. The winner of that match qualifies for the Playoffs. This format is also known as the GSL Group Format.
The playoffs bracket consists of eight teams, two from each group. All of these matches are a best of three, single elimination format. Teams advance in the bracket until a winner is decided.
There were seven maps to choose from. However, Nuke was taken out of the active map pool and Train was brought back in for the first time since the second major at EMS One Katowice 2014. In the group stage, both teams ban two maps. From the remaining three maps, the map is randomly selected, which is played in the end. In the playoffs, each team will first remove one map. Then, each side chooses a map, which will be played in the first two matches. If the series were to go to a third map, that map is randomly selected among the three remaining maps.
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