Starladder i-League Invitational Season 3 announced as Valve Minor, with finals in Kiev

Veteran esports tournament organizer Starladder has announced the third seasons of its Starladder i-League Invitational including a LAN final in Kiev. The live finals will take place at the Kiev CyberSport Arena with a $300,000 prize pool, the minimum that a Minor can distribute after Valve’s contribution.

The tournament, now in its third iteration, will begin with open qualifiers via FaceIt in all six Valve qualifying regions. The winners of these open qualifiers will then move into a closed qualifier, and each region’s winner will proceed to Kiev in October.

Because the event is confirmed as a Minor, it will give Qualifying Points to teams. However, at the time of writing, there is no word on how the QP point system will work, nor on roster lock deadlines.

In past iterations, the event had similar parameters: a $300,000 prize pool for last year’s event and $100,000 for the year before, with qualifiers from various regions. The main addition this year is the South American qualifier, a requirement added due to the Majors/Minors sponsorship.

This will be the first Valve-sponsored event of the new competitive ecosystem. If you need a quick refresher on what that means for the event and its attending teams and players, check out our primer on the new circuit’s details.