Recently, all qualifiers for IEM Atlanta 2026 have concluded. We already covered the global closed qualifier featuring European teams in a recent blog. After that, the American qualifiers also wrapped up, where only one slot was available.
The Ukrainian organization Passion UA, which currently fields a North American roster with one Ukrainian player, managed to secure the region’s only slot for the tournament. Passion UA entered the qualifier as the favorite and fully lived up to expectations, losing only one map across four matches against Wildcard Gaming.
All participants who will travel to Atlanta are now known, and among them will be as many as 11 Ukrainians across different teams:
- Natus Vincere: Valerii “b1t” Vakhovskyi, Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov
- BC.Game: Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev
- B8 Esports: Oleksii “alex666” Yarmoschuk, Andrii “npl” Kukharskyi, Artem “kensizor” Kapran, Dmytro “esenthial” Tsvir, Daniil “s1zzi” Vinnyk
- FUT Esports: Dmytro “dem0n” Myroshnychenko, Nikita “cmtry” Samolotov
- Passion UA: Vladyslav “Kvem” Korol
The tournament itself will take place from May 11 to 17, with a prize pool of $1,000,000. It will be the final ESL event before the Major. Running in parallel will be PGL Astana, one of the biggest tournaments in terms of prize money, featuring a pool of $1,600,000.
As a reminder, Prince William recently visited the Esports World Cup Foundation.