BLAST heads to Mongolia for first-ever event

BLAST has announced that they will be heading to Mongolia to host their first-ever Counter-Strike event as they have announced BLAST Premier Open Ulaanbaatar. Taking place in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the event will be held in May 2027 with 16 teams set to fight it out for a $1,250,000 prize pool.

The BLAST Premier Open Ulaanbaatar will be held between May 10, 2027 and May 23, 2027 and will have 11 teams invited through VRS and five teams making it through the regional qualifiers. 11 teams will get direct invites through their Valve rankings while the remaining five will come from the regional qualifiers held in Asia, Europe, North America and South America. The Asian qualifier will see two teams qualify for the main event while the remaining qualifiers will have one team make it through. Teams will be invited to the main event through the VRS ranking dated March 1, 2027 with the invitations going out on March 2, 2027 while the regional qualifier invite dates will also be the same.

The online regional qualifiers will be held between April 16, 2027 and April 18, 2027 with the Closed Qualifiers having four VRS invited teams. The qualifiers will see open qualifiers head into a closed qualifier format with the closed qualifiers being an eight-team single elimination format. The Asian Closed qualifier will follow an eight-team GSL format.

The Mongolian event will be BLAST's third event in Asia in 2027 as they have already announced events in Singapore and Hong Kong for the year. BLAST has also provided an additional incentive for the invited teams stating that teams will also receive money from the new Acceptance fee model.