Valve announced four months ago that they would be implementing new tournaments during the year. The Major system would have a competition in Autumn, Winter, Spring and culminate with The International in the Summer. Valve have recently released a blog post with new details for these Majors.
The blog post revealed that the first Major will take place in Europe during November. Valve however have not revealed which country it will be held in or any specific dates. They did announce that there will be open qualifiers and regional qualifiers for the event. The open qualifiers will be held on the 6th of October until October 9th, with the regional qualifiers following from the 10th to the 13th of October. Valve explained the qualifiers saying: “Any team may participate in an Open Qualifier, and two teams from each region will be among those invited to participate in the Regional Qualifiers. The Regional Qualifiers will then determine several of the teams to be invited to battle at the Major.”
There was also information regarding the roster changes. If teams wish to be eligible for a direct invitation or the qualifiers, then they must finalize their roster by September 5th, at 12:00 am PDT. If a team undergoes roster changes after this point then they will not be able to receive a direct invitation.