Valve have announced four regional "Minor" tournaments in January which will give lesser known teams an opportunity to gain notice as well as act as local qualifiers for the MLG Columbus 2016 official offline qualifier.

Despite MLG Columbus 2016 being several months away, preparation for the event continues to gain traction as four regional "Minors" have now been announced by Valve, with each Minor handled by a different company in terms of production and logistics.

The Minors will be held in January and only involve players who were not Legends or Challengers in the previous CS:GO Major (DreamHack Cluj-Napoca). Each event is billed as featuring high-quality production, in-game-client streaming, and a $50,000 prize-pool.



PGL will host the European Regional Minors

Most importantly, the winner of each Regional Minor Championship will receive an invitation to the offline qualifier for MLG Columbus 2016, about which there is yet no other information.

The regional qualifiers, along with hosting company, will be:

CIS - StarLadder

Europe - PGL

Asia - ESL

Americas - MLG

PGL have already announced the format for the European Regional Minor, and it will include four online qualifiers with 128 teams each. These qualifiers will culminate in an eight team, three day LAN in Bucharest, Romania. More information can be found here as well.

In addition, a majority of players for participating teams must be citizens of countries in the respective regions involved. More information about the Regional Minors is no doubt forthcoming.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter