Blizzard announced today that the StarCraft II World Championship Series Challenger Oceania-South East Asia qualifiers for the World Championships in Austin, Texas will be held in Sydney at the Intel Extreme Masters.
The StarCraft 2 World Championship Qualifiers Sydney will see the best players in the regions compete for a chance to qualify for the WCS in Austin.
The qualifiers will take place on May 5, 2018 at the IEM.
StarCraft 2 World Championship Qualifiers Sydney
Taking place in the expo hall, adjacent to the main arena, the WCS qualifiers will see Season One finalists, Sean “Probe” Kempen (Protoss) and Sheldon “Seither” Barrow (Terran) face off against six other players.
The remaining six finalists will be decided at an open online qualifier to be held on April 8.
Probe is currently ranked 15th in the WCS and a win at the Sydney qualifiers would bump him up to 9th overall. If he secured a place at the finals, he would be the first ever competitor from Australia and New Zealand at the global finals.
Making that bank
The eight finalists will be competing for more than just a place in Austin. With a $10,000 USD prize pool up for grabs, the winners will be walking away with fatter wallets.
The top two players will secure a place at Austin which will feature a $101,000 USD prize pool.
WCS Austin will take place on June 1-3 and is one of four major WCS events planned for 2018. The first event took place in Leipzig, Germany and saw Europe’s best player, Joona “Serral” Sotala, claimed his first championship win.
Tickets to the Intel Extreme Masters in Sydney are on sale now.
If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch all the action on Twitch.
