The following will contain loads of very important information. If you are participating in the tournament, you should read it carefully! Disclaimer: wall of text incoming

Today we have decided to expand our tournament one last time (to 72 teams total!). If your team made the cut, you should have received an Email. You can also check this page to see all participants:
https://www.toornament.com/en_GB/tournaments/3268804567799422976/participants/

You can still sign up until wednesday, 8th April, 21.00 CEST, but you will be put on the waiting list.
Current waiting list: (tuesday evening)
73. MixToad
74. opa! squad
75.Golden Gyps
76. ez$
77. Les Téchets
78. NC/AB
79. Sora Elektro
80. Feline Funnies
81. Ciganyok
82. Mr McVities, Grandstanding HobNobs
83. Aim Allergics
+ 6 more

The structure is now final and no more subject to change.
And this is where it gets complicated so open your energy drink of choice and activate your brain:

Invite
8 Invite teams will be seeded into two groups of 4 teams. Each group plays a Round Robin, 3 matches of Best-of-2 maps in order to determine the seeding for the knockout bracket.
All 8 invite teams will make it to the knockout bracket, where they will be joined by the best 8 open teams in a single elimination K.O. phase. All knockout matches are going to be Bo3 maps, with the sole exception being the Grand Finals (Bo5).

So far, so easy.

Open

- 16 groups of 4 teams each. Round Robin, 3 matches with Best-of-1 maps

- after the group stage all 1st placed teams will be put into a 16-team knockout-bracket. These teams will play one BO3 match against another group winner in order to determine the 8 teams that will join the invite teams in the main tournament K.O. phase. [/b] (all BO3s)

- after the group stages all 2nd placed teams will also be put into a 16-team knockout-bracket. They will compete for the inofficial title of "best 2nd placed team".

- We will be doing the same with the 3rd placed and 4th placed team. This should ensure that all teams get to play somewhat even matches at one point, because the initial group stage will likely be very inbalanced. The Round of 16 will take place on friday, Quarter-, Semi- and Finals on saturday.

--> all teams will be playing at least one BO3-maps match after the group stage, no matter how well you did! The winners of this match get to play saturday as well.

Since this is a lot of information, we created a flowchart, hoping this visualisation will help you understand the structure:
http://prntscr.com/rx03go

As we doubled the overall tournament size, we also doubled the size of our Invite bracket.
The Invite teams are:

NerdRage- counou,dmoule,Yeehaw, Josh, Elacour, shock
les cuniculiculteurs cumixaphilistes- Raf, Karnax, AlienSmiley, Olgha, Deli, mulaa, Dwo, Clem
Da Choke Bustaz- Condawg, Yllen, chris, Funs, Ratslayer, ubrs
Ascent- Domo, Papi, Toemas, Iatgink, Credu, Lukas
6ix- ever_x, nubbi, Voxtec, Gaz, Smirre, Ace
Bionicle- Dr. Phil, Dandere, Toast, Aubriac, Pot8o, Juno
baton esports- seeds, eemes, nevo, sorex, amarok, azunis
Super Buck World- kaptain, Permzilla, Thaigrr, kaidus, Starkie, Silentes, Thalash

We accepted another 28 teams today, exactly doubling the intended size of the tournament!
If you are amongst these now 56 teams, your spot is guaranteed. If you are not, then you have to wait until teams which signed up earlier than you drop out.
That said: PLEASE LET US KNOW IF YOUR TEAM WISHES TO NOT PLAY THE TOURNAMENT!
First teams on the waiting list at the time of writing this are:
57. The Joe Zone
58. clarted gaming
59. McBities
60. Lithuanian Rapsody
61. SOP
62. Baltica Olds
63. Boomer Squad
64. conotech
... + more

Updates on the new schedule and format will be published within the next days.

More like 18 teams, but yeah.

Seems unlikely that we will accept more than 56 teams at this point, but it may be.

Good riddance.

We have now verified the first 28 teams that signed up. You should have received an Email.
You are going to be allowed to play, not matter how many more teams sign up or what structure we will end up using in the end. The other teams sadly will have to wait until after the signups closed in order to know. :(

One more important thing: We will start making the groups and brackets immediately after the signups close.
You then will have a window of approx. 24 hours (9th April) to "check in" to the tournament. This step is necessary for us in order to find out which teams already died after signing up or simply cannot play due to unforeseen circumstances.

Should you not check in, you will automatically be replaced by a team on the waiting list.

In any case, please let an admin know ASAP should your team withdraw from the competition!

Wow, we have already reached the planned maximum of teams.
But since there seems to be interest of more teams, we say: screw our plans!

We have increased the maximum from 32 to 64 teams, so you can still sign up!!

Please note, that not all teams will be able to participate. We will think of a format which includes as many teams as possible, but until the end of signups (8th April. 21 CEST) we will likely not exactly know what the structure will be. Only one thing is for sure: there will be a ton of TF2 played on easter weekend!

Teams who signed up for invite but do not make it into the invite group will automatically be seeded into an open group.

- Updated Rule 2.7 (regarding livestreams)
- added Rule 6.7.1: Maps (ETF2L S35 map pool)

Actually, it was meant slightly differently to what GipsArm said in #8.
You cannot participate when:
- on 10th April you have an active ban that on this day is active for 1 month or longer

You are o.k. to play if you have no active ban or you have been only banned for less than a month at the time of the tournament. This basically means that 2-week demo bans or similar bans won't affect your eligibility to play.
Cheaters are not okay to play though.
The 1-month-part was basically implemented, because for LAN we couldn't really say: No banned players at all. If you had gotten demobanned 1 week before LAN with all your stuff booked it would have created awkward situations...

When you challenge god, god smites you down.

Well said.

credu egg: i dont know what poached means

On deli's stream the donation goal is set to 500 €. Though admittedly it also says "182 days to go"...

As a Seahawks fan I hope it will be a 55-58 inOvertime

http://prntscr.com/qwhqxu

Goddammit

If there are any invite-level NA teams out there who are interested in attending this event, shoot me a DM in discord!
I am tagged as Tournament Admin in the LAN Discord.
PS: this event WILL happen.