ESL Pro League Season 8 (shortened as EPL Season 8) is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament run by ESL. It is the eighth season of the ESL Pro League. Teams from five continents, North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America, will compete in six leagues to attempt to qualify for the Finals. The EPL finals returned to Odense, Denmark. The regular season started on September 26, 2018, and will end on November 14, 2018. China's season started with ViCi Gaming upsetting TyLoo in a best of three series. Southeast Asia's season started with B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape taking down Recca Esports, which included a 16-0 map. Europe's season started with Space Soldiers defeating Ninjas in Pyjamas and ended with HellRaisers defeating G2 Esports. North America's season kicked off with Renegades dominating and ended with defeating Luminosity Gaming.
The finals started on December 4, 2018, and ended on December 9, 2018. In the finals Astralis defeated Team Liquid in four maps in a five-game series to take home a second straight EPL title.
This tournament is the ninth tournament of the first season of the Intel Grand Slam, which is a list of premier tournaments run by ESL and DreamHack. The first team to win four titles would earn an extra $1,000,000. Astralis claimed this title after winning DreamHack Masters Marseille 2018, ESL Pro League Season 7, Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII - Chicago, and this event.
Format
The eighth season saw used the same format as the seventh season. ESL announced on February 20, 2018, that the EPL Finals would be expanded to 16 teams. On March 5, 2018, EPL announced the creation of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) division, which would divide teams up into three regions and then feature eight teams in an APAC regional. The eighth season would split up this region into three leagues, which includes China (effectively East Asia), Southeast Asia, and Oceania. EPL later announced on March 15, 2018, that a South American division, called the LA LEAGUE, would be created and would feature eight teams from a sixteen team closed qualifier.
North America and Europe featured the top 9 and 11 teams, respectively from last season's ESL Pro League Season 6, one team from the ESEA Season 27: Premier Finals and two teams from the Season 7 Relegation, which featured the bottom two teams from each league from Season 7 and the two runner-ups from the ESEA Season 27: Premier Finals. The China, Southeast Asia, and India regions were grouped into the Asia group; China and Southeast Asia had 8 teams each and India had twelve teams. The Oceania region featured eight teams. Seven teams from Europe, six teams from North America, one team from Asia, one team from Oceania, and one team from South America will make up the sixteen teams in the Finals.
During the regular season for North America and Europe, each team will play every team in its league in two best-of-ones. The winner of each game will receive three points and the loser of each game will receive zero points. If a game ends to overtime, the winner will receive two points and the loser will receive one point. The top six teams in North America and the top seven teams in Europe by the end of the season from each region will head to the Finals. Teams that placed seventh through ninth in North America and eighth through eleventh in Europe will not head to the playoffs but will secure a spot in next season's EPL. Teams that came in last will automatically be demoted to the Premier Division. The next two bottom teams will go through a relegation phase, in which those teams will be placed in a four team double elimination bracket, along with teams that placed second and third in the ESEA Season 27: Premier Division of their region. The top two teams move on to EPL Season 8. The winner of ESEA Season 27: Premier Division will automatically be invited to EPL Season 8. It would later be announced the Europe's league would feature sixteen teams next season, so Ninjas in Pyjamas and Fnatic would be safe from relegation and be invited next season.
There were also periods in which no matches were played. After week 1, no matches were played for one week due to StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 6 in Ukraine featuring six EPL teams. After a hefty week 2, no matches were played with EPICENTER 2018 featuring four EPL teams. After week 3, no matches were played twelve days due to BLAST Pro Series: Copenhagen 2018 from November 2 to 3 featuring six EPL teams, cs_summit 3 from November 1 to 4 featuring six EPL teams, and Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII - Chicago from November 6 to 11 featuring fourteen EPL teams.
