The April 6 cut-off date for invites to the IEM Cologne Major is fast approaching, and the race for the coveted 32 Major spots is slowly but surely building up to the final crescendo.
During the last few days, the conclusion of ESL Pro League S23, HyperX Roman Imperium Cup VI, and DFRAG Wildcard LAN Season 1 proved to be the biggest movers of the VRS ranking, but the Major invites are far from decided due to a plethora of open LANs coming before the April cut-off.
The biggest story of the last few days was Liquid and G2 's swap of Guy "NertZ" Iluz and Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa , which will give Liquid an Americas-majority if they are to play five matches before the cut-off.
The move garnered a fair bit off criticism, including Marsborne 's GM on Twitter , as the move more or less eliminated his squad's chance of making IEM Cologne and threw other majority-NA squads, notably M80 and Passion UA , into uncertainty.
Liquid , who are currently predicted to have 1298 VRS points at the Major cut-off, would slot in between paiN and Voca on the Americas VRS, and still have BLAST Open Rotterdam, DraculaN S6, and WINAMAX CS2 trophy to play before the cutoff — making their Major appearance almost a guarantee.
DFRAG Wildcard LAN Season 1 , an eight-team LAN held in Brisbane, Australia, has massively shaken up the Asian VRS.
THUNDER dOWNUNDER took home the trophy and collected 165 VRS points for their troubles, which places them second in our predicted Major invite list , while fellow grand finalists SemperFi also rose to fourth in the aforementioned list.
Thanks to this, Lynn Vision and TYLOO have fallen out of the predicted Major attendees, but both will have plenty of chances to rectify that situation.
The latter will play BLAST Open Rotterdam, where a decent run could provide them with a massive amount of VRS points, while both are in attendance at XSE LOOP Cup Season 1.
The two Chinese squads could also sign up for the upcoming XSE GangKui Cup Season 2 Finals, set to end just one day before the invite cut-off, while the upcoming CS Asia Championship Asia qualifier means that the region's race is set to go down to the wire.
In Europe, several teams have boosted their chances with some solid results over the weekend. Ninjas in Pyjamas ' Roman Imperium Cup VI victory has put them within Major contention, as has K27 's victory at MPKBK CIS LAN Season 3.
Both of those teams don't have the best schedule going forward, however, meaning Mischief's prediction rates Ninjas in Pyjamas ' Major chances at 21.3% and K27 's at 2.3%.
In terms of other moves, Liquid are expected to depart the EU standings after signing malbsMd , while FaZe 's sign-up for DraculaN S6 makes their Major appearance chances at almost 90%, as per Mischief .
The Major race is set for a rather quiet week as the scene prepares for the last-second dash towards Cologne. From March 23 onward, open LAN events will be popping up around the world, with HLTV covering the key results in a live post to keep you informed.