We respect your privacy

We use cookies to make our offer user-friendly and to constantly improve it. Cookies for analysis purposes are only set if you accept them below, or accept all of them. If cookies are deactivated, the functionality of our website may be limited. For more information, please see our privacy policy.

IEM Katowice 2020 - Recap

Pure prestige

IEM Katowice is one of the most important and prestigious tournaments of the year. With a prize money of 500.000 USD it is also financially one of the biggest events. Almost all teams of the HLTV Top-20 were represented at this competition and played for the title in Poland.

  jAlex

The group stage was divided into two tournament trees, which played out the playoff participants in double elimination mode.

Winner and tournament MVP

The winner of the tournament was NAVI, who mastered the playoffs in an extremely sovereign manner and secured the title in the final match against G2 with 3:0. Tournament MVP was NAVI's star player Alekandr "s1mple" Kostyliev, who played a fantastic tournament.

Group stage

In group A, Astralis, fnatic and NAVI finally managed to secure tickets for the playoffs. While Astralis reached the best seeding place undefeated, NAVI had to fight their way through the lower bracket against NiP and FaZe. They previously lost to fnatic 2-1 in a close encounter in the Upper Bracket semifinals.

100 Thieves was able to surprise greatly by advancing in Group B. While G2 and Liquid advanced to the playoffs undefeated in the Upper Bracket, Evil Geniuses and mousesports failed in the Lower Bracket against 100Thieves.

Playoffs

The playoffs were played in a single elimination tournament mode. The first round was played by Liquid, NAVI, fnaitc and 100Thieves, while G2 and Astralis entered the second round.

NAVI clearly beat Liquid and Astralis 2-0 in the top half of the tournament tree and should also win the following final match without map loss. In the second quarterfinal, 100Thieves' great run came to an end and Swedish team fnatic secured their semifinal ticket. With the defeat against G2 in the semifinals, the second finalist was also determined.

Surprises and disappointments

Especially the Australians 100Thieves could surprise with a great run through the lower bracket to get a place in the playoffs and beat some overpowering teams.

Disappointing was the result and especially not reaching the playoffs for FaZe, Vitality, mousesports and Evil Geniuses. All of the teams mentioned had ambitions to play for the title of IEM Champions, but were ultimately eliminated after the group stage.

Performance of the individual teams

  • Astralis: Good performance, no chance against NAVI
  • mousesports: Disappointing seventh place
  • Liquid: Strong group stage
  • fnatic: Failed in the semifinals, good performance of the Swedes
  • Evil Geniuses: Elimination in the group stage, expectations not met
  • Vitality: Tournament to forget
  • G2: Final defeat hurts, but still good performance
  • FaZe: Elimination in the group stage, overall disappointing
  • 100Thieves: Big surprise, excellent group stage
  • MAD Lions: Points win against Virtus.pro, little to get in general
  • NiP: Far away from the playoffs
  • Virtus.pro: Not competitive
  • Cloud9: Early exit without winning any points
  • Renegades: Not a single win
  • TYLOO: Early exit without scoring a point.

Do you enjoy our free, quality journalism?
Support us by clicking the banner below!

Information powered by Liquipedia