Asian contingent locked in for the Cologne Major

The race to the IEM Cologne 2026 Major intensified about a month ago with local LANs across Asia and Oceania nearly every other week. The MongolZ were already locked in as Asia's Stage 3 candidate while the other four slots were heavily contested for. TYLOO took the grind to a whole new level by attending two LANs at the same time which eventually drew massive criticism. However, with all the local LANs done and dusted, lets take a look at who cleared the cutoff for Asian invites for IEM Cologne 2026:

Stage 3

The MongolZ

bLitz
Techno
mzinho
910
cobrazera

Stage 1

Floating right below the invites range, TYLOO and Lynn Vision bagged a massive amount of VRS from Chinese LANs and shot up to #2 and #3, dethroning Australian teams Ground Zero and SemperFi who broke into the invites range off of regional LANs last month. TYLOO's win against FaZe in BLAST Open Rotterdam, title win at GangKui Cup Season 2 and a controversial second place finish at Yuqilin POB Season 3 nets them a Cologne Major invite.

FlyQuest managed to hold on after entering the IEM Cologne Major's invites range after a win at ZHI-TECH Elite Masters and a top three finish at DraculaN Season 5. Their runners-up status at GangKui Cup Season 2 solidified their contention. Their fellow countrymen THUNDER dOWNUNDER posted back to back LAN wins at DFRAG Wildcard LAN Season 1 and ANZC Locals Brisbane 2026 to confirm their Major invite.

Stage 1 of IEM Cologne 2026 begins on 2nd June with two Chinese and Australian teams among the sixteen invited teams. A couple of Swiss system iterations filters out the top half as Stage 3 kicks off with the elites on 11th June 2026. Alongside The MongolZ- Vitality, NAVI, PARIVISION, Aurora, FURIA, Falcons and MOUZ have bagged direct Stage 3 invites.