The StarLadder Major: Berlin 2019, also known as StarLadder Major 2019 or Berlin 2019, was the fifteenth Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) Major Championship. It was held in Berlin, Germany from August 23 to September 8, 2019. Fourteen teams qualified for this Major based on their placement at the previous Major, Katowice 2019, while another ten teams qualified from their respective regional qualifiers. It featured a prize pool, the eighth consecutive Major with this prize pool. It was also the first time the Ukrainian-based organization StarLadder. along with its long-term Chinese partner ImbaTV, hosted a Major.
Astralis won the final against underdogs AVANGAR to become the only team in CS:GO history to win four Majors, and the only team to win three Majors consecutively. Astralis's Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz was the MVP, joining coldzera as the only players to have two Major MVPs.
Background
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. In professional CS:GO, the Valve-sponsored Majors are the most prestigious tournaments.
The defending champions were Astralis, after winning their second consecutive and third total Major at IEM Katowice 2019. Astralis and Fnatic entered the tournament tied for most Major titles.
Format
The Major cycle began with four Minors, or regional qualifiers: Americas, Asia, CIS, and Europe. Two teams from each qualifier moved on to the Major. In addition, because Valve reduced the number of direct Major invites from sixteen to fourteen, the third-place teams at each respective Minor advanced to a third-place qualifier that sent two more teams to the Major.
The Major featured twenty-four teams. The top eight teams from the Katowice 2019 were the Legends, and the remaining sixteen teams—the teams that placed ninth through fourteenth at Katowice and the ten teams that advanced from the Minors—were known as Challengers.
The Major was split into three stages. The first stage was the New Challengers stage, featuring all Challengers in a Swiss-system tournament: the top eight teams advanced to the next stage and the bottom eight teams were eliminated. Teams in the New Challengers stage were initially given an Elo ranking based on the HLTV world rankings. Each round of matches was seeded based on this Elo system. The second stage was the New Legends stage, a second Swiss-system group stage seeded in the same way. This stage featured the eight Legends from the Katowice Major and the eight teams advancing from the New Challengers stage. Like the New Challengers stage, the New Legends stage also advanced the top eight teams and eliminated the bottom eight teams. All teams from this stage except the bottom two teams earned automatic invites to the following Major. The final stage was the New Champions stage, and teams that advanced to this stage received Legends status at the following Major. This stage featured an eight team, best-of-three, single elimination bracket.
Map Pool
The map pool for this Major changed from Katowice 2019. Valve took Cache out of the map pool and announced it would be redesigned. Rather than reintroducing Cobblestone, which had been in the map pool in previous Majors, Valve added Vertigo to the competitive map pool for the first time.
Minors
Each regional qualifier, called "Minors", featured eight teams. Each Minor also had a 50,000 prize pool, with first place receiving 30,000, second place taking in 15,000, and third place raking in the last 5,000. Like past recent Minors, no teams were directly invited to the Minors. There is no prize pool for the third place play in. The Europe and Americas Minors will start on July 17 and last until July 21. The CIS and Asia Minors will start on July 24 and last until July 28; the third place play in will take place on July 29.