Dota 2 Champion League returns with season 8 and open qualifiers

For the Dota 2 Champion League's first season of 2016, they have decided to offer eight open qualifier slots and a $5,000 prize pool.

D2CL decided to revamp their format for the eighth season of the online tournament. The organizers have decided to invite only eight of the 16 teams that will be participating in the tournament, the other eight will earn their spots via open qualifiers. Top two teams from the four weekly open qualifiers will fill advance straight into the main event. Sign-ups for the first open qualifiers, scheduled on the 29th of Augus,t are already open and can be done here.

After the 16 teams participating in the tournament are set, they will be put into a best-of-three single elimination bracket to determine the winners of the $5,000 prize pool.

The D2CL is a Europe-centric online tournament organized by Epic Esports Events, the group behind events such as EPICENTER Moscow and previous D2CL seasons. The D2CL season 8 is the next tournament in the D2CL series after last year's D2CL season 6 and 7 (also known as Christmas Charity Magic), which each featured a unique format. Besides having a different format for seasons 6, 7 and 8, the prize pools are also different, season 8 offers a $5,000 prize while $35,000 was offered for season 7 and $50,000 was offered by season 6.

Source: D2CL Facebook