32 teams will compete in the first major tournament of 2025.

Falcons won the Wildcard spot

BLAST has announced the list of teams invited to BLAST Bounty Season 1, based on the Valve Rating System (VRS).

In addition to the 28 invitations based on VRS, the tournament also has 4 Wildcard spots for BLAST to allocate. This is a mechanism to ensure that each region has at least one representative team, even if that team is not in the top 28 of the rankings.

A team is eligible to receive a Wildcard spot if it meets one of the following two criteria:

• Include at least 3 players who were part of a team in the VRS top 8 at any time in the last 12 months, or
• The team has won any Tier 1 tournament in the last 12 months.

According to BLAST, the Falcons are the only team that meets these criteria, although it is currently unclear which squad was submitted by this Saudi organization. The Falcons currently only have one player left, Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif, while Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač is expected to join soon. Falcons briefly entered the VRS top 8 in February after reaching the semi-finals at IEM Katowice.

"We have invited the next teams in the VRS rankings to replace the two expected Wildcard spots," BLAST said. "We will announce additional Wildcard slots before the end of the year."

Below is the list of teams participating in BLAST Bounty Season 1:

FURIA had two teams eligible for invitations, but as each organization could only be represented by one squad, the invitation for FURIA fe was declined.

Imperial fe will compete in BLAST Bounty

The BLAST Bounty Season 1 tournament will take place from January 13 to 26, 2025, with a knockout format. Teams will be assigned "bounty" values ​​based on their rankings, making high-seeded teams bigger targets in matches.

The first two rounds will be held online. The eight strongest teams will then go to Copenhagen to participate in the LAN round, which will be played in a knockout format and the final will take place in a Bo5 format.