In a little over a week Europe's finest will clash once more at poLANd.tf #winter 2024! The hotly anticipated tournament takes place in Łódź, Poland, with what may be the most stacked list of competitors in years. To find out who, what and when it all goes down, read on...

Poster by deli and Ness "uberchain" Delacroix

FORMAT

The tournament begins on Friday 23rd Feb with a round robin group stage: best-of-one matches, with the sixteen teams split into two groups of eight.

On Saturday 24th Feb, the top four teams in each group progress immediately to the upper bracket of the best-of-three playoffs, while the next two from each group are placed into the lower bracket and forced to run the gauntlet to survive. Finally, the bottom two teams in each group are eliminated from the main bracket, but still have the B tournament to fight for their pride.

This means that by Sunday 25th Feb only four teams remain in contention for the title: two in the lower bracket semi-final, one in the lower bracket final, and the upper bracket champion waiting in the best-of-five Grand Final to see who truly is the best team in Europe.

See the Toornament page for full details

TEAMS

With so much community interest, automatic invites were extended to Premiership and Premiership-level teams, while a qualifier was held to force all others to fight it out in an attempt to secure a spot.

Directly invited:

• ★★★½
• Evil Gameing
• MANDEM
• tf2hard.com
• The Last Resort
• Varmkorv Boogie
• Wer das liest ist doof
• Witness Gaming

Qualified:

• George
• NANDEM
• TOILET CLEANER MASTERS (formerly POLAKI)
• alien workshop
• 3 Steps Back
• Bloking Hazard
• Saints (formerly Potop Szwedzki)
• POUNDLAN *

* Invited after tf2easy BLACK dropped out, as the next highest placed team from the qualifier

PRIZE POOL

• First place: 78 keys
• Second place: 36 keys
• Third place: 18 keys

MAP POOL

As voted by participants

• cp_granary_pro_rc16a
• cp_gullywash_f9
• cp_process_f12
• cp_snakewater_final1
• cp_sunshine
• koth_bagel_rc7
• koth_product_final

ITEMS AND CONFIG

Participants voted on whether to use certain controversial weapons, and decided to BAN them all:

• Market Gardener
• Battalion's Backup
• Quickiebomb Launcher
• Loch-n-Load
• Gas Passer
• Detonator
• Scorch Shot
• Wrap Assassion

Participants also voted on the match config, deciding to keep the round reset timer at five minutes and with the vote on whether to extend the round end (humiliation) timer from 10s to 15s still open.

SCHEDULE

Friday 23rd Feb:

• Group stage match 1: 3pm CET | 2pm GMT | 9am EST | 6am PST
• Match 2: 4pm CET
• Match 3: 5pm CET
• Group A match 4: 6pm CET
• Group B match 4: 7pm CET
• Match 5: 8pm CET
• Match 6: 9pm CET
• Match 7: 10pm CET

Saturday 24th Feb:

• Upper Bracket Round 1: 3pm CET | 2pm GMT | 9am EST | 6am PST
• Lower Bracket Round 1: 5pm CET
• UB Semi Final / LB Round 2: 7:30pm CET
• UB Final / LB Round 3: 9:30pm CET

Sunday 25th Feb:

• LB Semi Final: 2:30pm CET | 1:30pm GMT | 8:30am EST | 5:30am PST
• LB Final: 4:30pm CET
• Grand Final: 7pm CET | 6pm GMT | 1pm EST | 10am PST
• Karaoke until close

COVERAGE

The tournament will be streamed live from Łódź on EssentialsTF while a remote B stream will also be live on Fireside Casts.

On-site casters:

• wandum
• Meer
• Benpl
• Not Steven
• Beater
• TurboTabs

On-site production:

• Samus
• Beater
• JMaxchill