Gaming and esports festival Copenhagen Gaming Week will host a Counter-Strike 2 tournament during its inaugural 2024 festival featuring ‘top teams’.
The esports event at Copenhagen Gaming Week will be operated by tournament organiser BLAST and will take place from January 12th-14th in 2024.
Copenhagen Gaming Week (CGW) is organised by hospitality group Bellagroup, in partnership with the local Copenhagen Municipality, tourism organisation Wonderful Copenhagen and Astralis-owned media company Blackbox Media.
For its inaugural edition, Copenhagen Gaming Week will take place at Bella Center Copenhagen and Bella Arena. Bellagroup partnered with BLAST to operate the tournament, which will act as a standalone event separate from its other tournament series.
The esports side of CGW will comprise the Counter-Strike 2 esports tournament, which will bring together a mix of ‘world class’ invited teams competing against teams sourced from an online open qualifier.
The exact format for the qualifier, and the teams invited, have yet to be revealed, but Bellagroup said the qualifier was aimed at the Northern European region. Prize pool details are yet to be revealed.
“While Copenhagen Gaming Week aims to be a festival celebrating all realms, communities, and genres within gaming, we cannot overlook the fact that structured, competition-driven gaming, known as esports, is a substantial part of the gaming scene,” Christian Folden Lund, CEO of Bellagroup, told Esports Insider.
The tournament will take place in the Esports Arena, which is one part of the gaming festival. CGW will also include educational areas for families, playgrounds for the kids, ‘superfan’ areas for communities such as cosplayers, D&D and Warhammer.
The event builds on a long history of esports in Denmark, which is known for its Counter-Strike pedigree. The country is home to tournament organiser BLAST, which has brought several events to the country, as well as leading teams such as Astralis and Heroic and numerous world class players.
Bella group said it worked with local government stakeholders to facilitate the event, including Wonderful Copenhagen, Copenhagen Municipality, Dansk Industri, the Capital Region of Denmark and the City of Copenhagen.
“There is a growing interest in specifically positioning Copenhagen on the global esports map, aligning with ongoing industry discussions about tourism, shoulder seasons, and mega events,” Lund told Esports Insider. “This is why Wonderful Copenhagen, for instance, has been the primary development partner for Copenhagen Gaming Week alongside Bellagroup since 2019.”
Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, Bellagroup are a hospitality group in the hotel, conference, event and hospitality industry. The company told Esports Insider that Copenhagen Gaming Week was ‘just the beginning’ of its esports plans.
“Our aim is to establish Copenhagen Gaming Week as a recurring event that grows and expands year by year. With BLAST overseeing our tournament format, we’re eager to showcase what Bellagroup’s newly constructed Bella Arena has to offer. This won’t be the last time you’ll find esports events taking place at Bella Center and Bella Arena.”
