Romanian esports production company PGL has officially announced its first-ever Tier 1 Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) tournament in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, set to run from April 15 to 25, 2027.
Surprisingly, the tournament was originally scheduled to take place in China in 2027. PGL, however, has now confirmed that the event has been moved to Mongolia and that it falls under the Mongolia visa region, which determines the visa rules and requirements that apply to players and staff travelling to the event.
The change from China to Mongolia was made in coordination with Valve, the game’s developer, and PGL says all other details of the tournament remain unchanged.
The tournament features a total prize pool of $1,000,000 along with a $300,000 VRS Invite Bonus. Of the $1,000,000 prize pool, the top three finishers receive the largest payouts. The first place gets a prize pool payout of $180,000 plus a club share of $100,000, for a total winnings of $280,000. Second place receives $80,000 and a club share of $75,000, totalling $155,000. Third place earns $50,000 and a club share of $65,000, for $115,000 in total. The club share is the portion of the winnings that goes to the organisation behind the team.
The announcement comes amid a scheduling dispute among tournament organisers. BLAST had already announced its own Mongolian event, BLAST Open Ulaanbaatar, with dates of May 10 to 23, 2027. As mentioned earlier, PGL’s event, which was originally planned for China, was moved to Ulaanbaatar and will take place about two weeks earlier. That gives PGL the distinction of hosting the first Tier 1 event in the country, and puts the two organisers in direct competition over the same market at practically the same time.
This is not the first clash of its kind. Since Valve ended the closed-franchise league systems, such as BLAST’s partner spots and ESL’s Louvre Agreement, organisers have competed for control of the open circuit and for space on the calendar. PGL has repeatedly clashed with rivals ESL and BLAST. Earlier in the 2027 planning cycle, PGL announced a Tier 1 event for January 13 to 25, 2027. Within hours, BLAST unveiled a new tournament, BLAST Bounty, for almost the same window, January 13 to 24, which forced teams to choose between the two.
Tensions peaked in late 2025 while PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 was being planned. PGL had scheduled the event to finish just two days before IEM Chengdu 2025 began. PGL CEO Silviu Stroie publicly accused rival organisers of creating an artificial monopoly, alleging that teams were being pressured or quietly threatened with exclusion from major future events such as the upcoming IEM Krakow Major, if they attended PGL’s tournament.
ESL responded that its 2025 calendar had been published before PGL’s. BLAST also criticised PGL, saying it had chosen not to take part in industry meetings meant to align calendars and encourage shared governance. PGL eventually added a two-day buffer between the events to resolve the immediate logistical problem.
