The Conference will serve as a play-in stage of ESL Pro League in the upcoming seasons.

ESL has shared more details about the new ESL Pro League structure after introducing the EPL Conference stage on Wednesday. A part of the changes will be in effect already in the next transitional 15th season, with the first EPL Conference taking place in late November. As a result of the expansion, the prizepool of ESL Pro League has also been increased from $750,000 to $850,000.

The Conference will see all winners from the ESL Pro Tour Challenger level tournaments — DreamHack Opens, ESEA Premiers (renamed to ESL Challenger and ESL Challenger Leagues from 2022), and ESL National Championships — converge to play for a number of spots in the ESL Pro League group stages.

For the transitional 15th season, three group stage slots will come from the Conference and three more will be awarded to ESEA Premier S38 winners. From season 16 on, the Conference stage will award more slots in the Pro League group stage, with Louvre agreement teams and the ESL World Ranking filling the remainder.

Renewal and Extra Salt have already qualified for the first EPL Conference in November as the winners of DreamHack Open June in Asia and North America. The event originally awarded the two teams spots in IEM Fall, but after IEM Fall became part of the RMR circuit their spots were transferred to EPL Conference instead.

The EPL Season 15 Conference team distribution looks as follows:

Renewal
DH Open September
DH Open September
ESEA-P S38 runner-up
+5-8 National Champ. slotsExtra Salt
DH Open September
DH Open November
ESEA-P S38 runner-up

For the next three Pro League seasons, the Conference will be detached from the rest of ESL Pro League, taking place up to a few months ahead of the main part of the season, but from 2023 on ESL plan to have the Conference stage run immediately before the group stage.

Below you can see the schedule of the next three seasons:

ESL Pro League Season 15
Conference: November 23-28 (online)
Group stage: March 9-April 3, 2022
Playoffs: April 5-10, 2022

ESL Pro League Season 16
Conference: June 14-19, 2022
Group stage: August 31-September 25, 2022
Playoffs: September 27-October 2, 2022

ESL Pro League Season 17
Conference: November 22-27, 2022
Group stage: 2023
Playoffs: 2023

Renewal #105 Gan-Erdene 'dobu' BatboldBat-Enkh 'kabal' BatbayarUuganbayar 'NEUZ' Nyam-OtgonYesuntumur 'nin9' GantulgaBoldbaatar 'rate' Tengis Extra Salt #27 Aran 'Sonic' GroesbeekEdgar 'MarKE' MaldonadoJohnny 'JT' TheodosiouJosh 'oSee' OhmJustin 'FaNg' Coakley