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The IEM Katowice 2025 play-ins will begin on January 29th. Esports News UK’s Counter-Strike writer, Darragh Harbinson, takes you through five storylines to look out for as play begins on Wednesday morning.
Will the Imperial Valkyries soar?
Imperial Valkyries, aka Imperial fe, have dominated the women’s scene as a roster since the birth of ESL Impact, the premier women’s-only tournament in Counter-Strike. As Nigma Galaxy, the roster won seasons 1-4 of the competition, with the roster taking seasons 5 and 6 as Imperial fe.
The rostered garnered praise in their defeat to Navi on their tier-one debut at Blast Bounty recently, with IGL Victoria ‘tory’ Kazieva especially attracting praise for a series of well-executed T-side calls on Ancient against the 2024 Copenhagen Major champions.
Imperial fe have now joined the list of IEM Katowice 2025 teams, having become the first all-women team to qualify for the main IEM Katowice CS event.
Ana ‘ANa’ Dumbravă and her teammates will face Furia in the first match on Wednesday afternoon at 2.30pm GMT. ANa also recently won Women’s Player of the Year at the 2025 HLTV Awards recently.
Update: Imperial fe’s IGL tory will be missing out on IEM Katowice due to visa issues, with the team’s coach bubble stepping in.
Can a UK coach do it again?
Under British coach Ashley ‘ash‘ Battye’s leadership, GamerLegion have made four consecutive majors with three drastically different rosters. The organisation’s goal will be to replicate that feat for the fifth time with the fourth distinct version of the roster, replacing Timur ‘FL4MUS‘ Marev and Sebastian ‘volt‘ Maloș with Oldřich ‘PR‘ Nový and Fredrik ‘REZ‘ Sterner.
IEM Katowice will likely have a significant impact on that goal. Firstly, IEM Katowice represents one of the largest prize pools in competitive CS, at $1m for player prize money and $250,000 for club prize money. Prize money being the most significant metric in VRS, a good performance at Katowice could carry the squad a long way.
Additionally, under Valve’s ranking system, LAN performances are awarded a modifier making them more important for ranking. The top 10 European rosters will be invited directly to the major, with the 11th-26th ranked teams being invited to the MRQ, a qualification event from which six teams will qualify for the Austin Major.
The news comes after GamerLegion qualified for and put up a fight at the Shanghai Major last year.
Heroic’s roster dilemma
Tier one Counter-Strike is a pressure cooker with little room for error, but some rosters have less room for error than others. When Heroic announced their 2025 roster, they did so naming two substitutes in Linus ‘nilo‘ Bergman and Pavle ‘maden‘ Bošković.
Heroic have since confirmed that nilo was initially intended to be part of the main roster, but was unable to start the season with the roster due to “personal circumstances”.
Heroic went on to say: “Our starting five is locked in and will have a chance to prove themselves. Therefore, Linus will not have a guaranteed spot. He will have to fight his way back onto the team.”
It is unclear what period the existing roster will be given to “prove themselves”, but with such a talented prospect on the bench, Heroic’s roster now have the added pressure of having to deliver immediately or face replacement.
It is notable that Heroic consist of three players from the former-Sangal core. For invite purposes, Heroic must retain that Sangal core until such a time as their new roster has enough ranking points to qualify without the points the players earned under Sangal, therefore the obvious player under pressure is tn1r, who did not originate from that Sangal roster.
cadiaN under the microscope
As Astralis began their Blast Bounty run, they did so with their legendary four major-winning AWPer back in the server. Nicolai ‘device‘ Reedtz showed his class, averaging a 1.35 rating over four maps.
Casper ‘cadiaN‘ Møller, on the other hand, had an abject fragging performance as Astralis were eliminated from Blast Bounty against NaVi. The Danish IGL has played the majority of his career as an AWPer, meaning he demanded the most economic investment to get his weapon of choice into the playing field. Now playing alongside dev1ce, cadiaN has sacrificed the ‘the big green’ to take rifling roles.
More than that he has often played with submachine guns in order to save money for device’s weapon of choice. Naturally, that damages cadiaN’s ability to frag in the server, but his individual level in CS2 was under scrutiny even with the AWP when playing with Liquid and then later when device was absent during the Shanghai major.
The Dane’s lack of output was highlighted by CS2 analyst Voo on the Blast broadcast, stating “There’s a certain point where cadiaN just needs to frag better.” With device settling back into the roster, will IEM Katowice provide an uptick for the Danish IGL?
Will new-look Liquid find a winning formula at the IEM Katowice 2025 play-ins?
Liquid fans seemed largely glad to see the back of Mareks ‘YEKINDAR‘ Gaļinskis when he was officially benched in January. The Latvian had long struggled, notably regressing during his period as IGL then failing to recover in confidence or performances when he was relinquished of that duty.
Despite this, YEKINDAR’s benefit to any team is that he is a dedicated hard-entry – the first man in on T-side aggressions. In signing NertZ, Liquid didn’t exactly sign a one-for-one replacement in terms of role or aggression.
In their Blast debut, Liquid delegated opening duels with NertZ, Twistzz and jks sharing the entrying load. It remains to be seen whether that will be a formula for success for Liquid, who were upset by Heroic at Blast.
Under Twistzz’s leadership, Liquid frequently made it deep into tournaments but they had a hard ceiling when it came to contests against the teams at the top. Notably, the Canadian IGL has lost every contest against his former IGL, Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen, losing to Faze four times in a row.
Although Liquid have a lot to work on, they will be hoping at least not to regress from last year so must make it to the group stage. The bad news for Liquid? They will start their Katowice campaign against Heroic, who eliminated them at Blast.
Join esports fans and UK streamers at the IEM Katowice 2025 grand final watch party in London
Darragh Harbinson is a freelance writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK as well as the likes of UKCSGO, Dexerto and Rush B Media.
