ESL.uk is proud to announce the opening of the Counter-Strike 1.6 section. Show your skills in the Openings CUP! The Counter-Strike 1.6 5on5 Openings CUP signups are open for all UK teams. This cup will be for fun!

The British national qualifier for the third season of the Intel Extreme Masters is under way with 16 of the country's best Counter-Strike teams competing to qualify for the $750,000 global competition.

In the following weeks the Intel Extreme Masters III will take a big step forward to bringing you the ultimate eSports experience. Sign ups for the UK Counter-Strike qualifier are open from now until the 18th July. Remember, there's $750,000 to win this season!

The ESL Major Series - Season II - for Counter-Strike Female is almost over. The four best European teams qualified for the Playoffs and therefore they also qualified for the third season. For all other CS Female teams out there we have opened the application period for our ESL Major Series - CS Female - Season III. Check the full news to get all Information about the Application procedure.

The long days and nights of waiting are over, the Team Fortress 2 beta was finally unlocked on Monday night and thousands of you are now fragging each other with heavy machine guns and sentries. While owning public noobs is fun for a while, if you are craving for a taste of better quality players and more organised games, then we have the perfect tool for you...

We have recently announced the ESL Major Series powered by ASUS. Now it is time to present the distribution of the prize money. Also together with ASUS we offer you the chance to win a high-end Laptop in a big raffle. Do not miss out on the chance to win this great prize!

For years the Austrian Community demands a superordinate federation, which promotes the general development of eSport in Austria and which collects all existing forces. Now the time has come and the eSport-Association Austria (esvo) established itself today.

Some have waited nearly ten years, some a a few years less but without a doubt there are thousands of Team Fortress fans around the world preparing themselves for next week. That's right, one month before the Orange Box is released, the TF2 beta hits Steam this Monday!

GIGA 2 will be discontinued on November 15th. Instead, ESL-TV takes the place of GIGA 2 as "the" eSports TV-station. The legendary programmes that made ESL-TV famous will also be back, and more: ESL-TV will become the most important channel of a newly established TV production company. The best ESL matches will be embedded in a programme, that concentrates on the wishes of the viewer: eSports as it should be.

The Electronic Sports League proudly presents the Major Series powered by Asus. Every game can possibly be selected as part of the EMS, for the first time allowing players of all kinds of games to have a real Pro competition in their respective disciplines. The ESL Major Series starts off with 9 different games.

It has been a while since we've confirmed the rules with you guys, and even longer since they have been updated! With this news we announce our new rulebook for the CS Section. We hope that it will be easier for you to play Counter-Strike in the ESL. Read on for more info!

Updates to the Half-Life 1 Engine and Counter-Strike have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include a higher resolution and ingame advertisements. Check the full news for all the details.

<!-- featured_enc --> As the Pre-Season proceeds the participant now come together and get ready to start the 50,000 Euro European Nations Championship 2007. So we are proud to present the participants for the new season. Exactly 30 nations will participate in the Counter-Strike tourney. So you will have the chance to see 6 matches in the Qualification Round 1.

Over at the Futuremark forums is a chat log where a scammer tries to get hold of the Steam account of someone. Unfortunately, the scammer isn't all too smart and gives away his own info. Let this be a reminder to all our users to never give out your steam account information!

Here is a quick update on some matches in the Amateur Series. These games need the times and dates confirmed before they can be played so please use the match comments to make arrangements between yourselves.

It is time for the participants of the 1on1 Summer Cup to test their AWP skils in the Quarter Finals! From 32, were down to 8 in matches which will take place over the next week. Good luck!

The quarter finals of the ESL All-Star Tournament take place this week. With the cup introducing some new maps to ESL, this week we are playing on de_russka, this may mean some unconventional team play and with results relying mainly on individual skill!

Matches have been created in the Amateur Series competition for the next few weeks, please remember you are not limited to these games! You can challenge anyone and play as much as you like! Please read on to view the automatically created matches so that times and dates can be confirmed :D

On <b>Thursday 13th of July</b> the ESL All-Star Tournament, a competition for those who took part in our league last season, will begin! With 13 teams signing up, the 3 top seeds recieve a direct path to the next round, to view the fixtures read on!

With a few delays happening in the :esl: CS Summer Cups for various reasons, we move into the later stages of the 2on2 and 5on5 tournaments. We have seen some well played matches in the previous rounds and I assume that these will be no different. The 1on1 Summer Cup should get underway this week, although a few matches have already been played. Read below for a look at the fixtures for the next rounds.

The :esl: Electronic Sports League is proud to bring you the All-Star Tournament which will see the best teams from the Premiership, Division 1 and Division 2 battle it out on the news maps introduced to the ESL recently.

For years the mappool within the ESL UK Counter-Strike Ladders has been unchanged, but there is now a conclusion. For the first time in the history of the Electronic Sports League we will take up three custom maps in our major UK leagues.

Recently in the 5on5 MR15 Amatuer Series a new map was introduced, namely de_forge. Now de_forge can be found along with two other maps, de_russka and de_tuscan, in the 5on5 MR15 Advanced Ladder. The three maps will be added on Monday to the map pool and can be played in any matches immediately.

After a long and hard battled season, Division 1 and 2 come to an end. With alot of teams folding, it made it very agrivating for the teams that remained in the league. Thanks to those that managed to play all their games this season and we hope that you will take part in the :esl: <a href="/uk/cs/5on5/mr15/eas/">Amateur Series</a> that is now going to replace Division 1 and 2.

With the addition of de_forge, teams play their first officials on it this week. We have released the new map rotation for the upcoming quarter and hope that we have provided a good mix of maps. If you do not yet have de_forge, download link is availible at the bottom of this post!

A steady increase in the teams participating in the ESL UK: Amatuer Series means we are delighted to give you more coverage on this competition. With a season ending last night, we announce the winners of <i>ESL Premium Accounts</i> giving them access to some new features on the site!

You asked for this tournament and we gave you it! 32 teams entered, 16 advanced from the groups and we found out our champion last night. The final was between the two English Counties of Surrey and Kent and this is how the final turned out...

Here are some of the matches taking place in the :esl: Amateur Series. With added importance given to this league we will see alot more exciting games taking place! This week games take place on <b>de_dust2</b>.

With alot of players asking "where do we get the ESL anti-cheat?" we have decided to put a link into every CS league section.

With the first league season coming to an end we have had a bit of a mixed bag in terms of success. The :esl: Premiership was a huge success with the UK's top teams competing for a total of 9 weeks. The lower divisions however, were largely affected by the numbers of teams folding and losing interest. For these reasons we introduce the following changes...