BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1 viewer’s guide

The first top-tier Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) esports event of the year kicks off next Monday, on 12 January 2026. It’s an exciting one, from tournament organizer BLAST, who’ve been killing it in the scene for years. Let’s take a look at the most important BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1 details.

BLAST Bounty 2026 S1 details

Are you ready for BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1 to kick off the new year in style? Well, ready or not, here it comes! The tournament runs from Monday, 12 January 2026, until Sunday, 25 January 2026. The action begins with the Closed Qualifier (12 to 17 January), an online portion leading into the LAN finals.

In the Closed Qualifier, 32 teams are competing in a single-elimination bracket format, where all matches are best-of-three.

The total prize pool is $1,150,000. At the current Dollar to Rand exchange rate, that’s roughly R19 million. There’s a Player Share ($500,000) and a Club Share ($650,000). The prize pool is dynamic, with teams earning cash as they eliminate others.

If teams don’t make it out of this “Closed Qualifier” situation and into the top eight, they only receive a tiny portion of the prize pool.

A total of 32 teams are competing, but only the top eight will advance to the finals in Malta, where they’ll compete on LAN from 22 to 25 January 2026.

Teams Competing:

You can catch all the CS2 esports action via the official BLAST Twitch.tv channel. Stay tuned to Esports Central as we’ll bring you the results from the BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1, and many other top esports events in the future.

Header image via BLAST.