Heroic and fnatic have qualified for IEM Katowice after winning their respective upper bracket semi-finals against Gambit and HellRaisers in the Europe Closed Qualifer.

IEM Katowice 2018 Europe Closed Qualifier kicked off this weekend with four spots available at the Polish event which will take place from February 27 to March 4 with a $500,000 prize pool.

Earlier in the qualifier, HellRaisers beat AGO and mousesports while fnatic defeated Singularity. The upper bracket semi-final between fnatic and HellRaisers kicked off on Overpass where the Swedish team picked up eleven rounds on the CT-side and went on to win the map 16-12.

KRIMZ & co. have booked their places in Katowice

HellRaisers had the early lead on Train—the second map of the best of three series—and finished the first half 10-5 ahead. However, Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell & company came back to get the map victory with a 16-13 scoreline, qualifying for IEM Katowice 2018 with a 2-0 series win.

IEM Katowice 2018 Europe Closed Qualifier Best of 3 fnatic Matchpage 2 0 HellRaisers 16 Overpass 12 16 Train 13

fnatic K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 Robin 'flusha' Rönnquistflusha 55 - 35 +20 104.0 1.49 Jesper 'JW' WecksellJW 46 - 42 +4 78.9 1.07 Jonas 'Lekr0' OlofssonLekr0 41 - 41 0 75.8 1.05 Freddy 'KRIMZ' JohanssonKRIMZ 34 - 42 -8 76.8 0.95 Maikil 'Golden' SelimGolden 27 - 39 -12 51.8 0.74 HellRaisers K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 Özgür 'woxic' Ekerwoxic 50 - 37 +13 86.3 1.30 Bence 'DeadFox' BöröczDeadFox 42 - 40 +2 75.1 1.09 Vladyslav 'bondik' Nechyporchukbondik 41 - 39 +2 78.3 1.03 Kirill 'ANGE1' KarasiowANGE1 33 - 44 -11 74.8 0.94 Issa 'ISSAA' MuradISSAA 33 - 43 -10 75.4 0.86

The other upper bracket semi-final featured Gambit, who got a 2-1 victory over Natus Vincere in the previous round, and Heroic who picked up wins against BIG and North. Train was the first map between the Danish and Kazakhstani teams and Jakob "⁠JUGi⁠" Hansen's team triumphed in overtime (19-15).

The first half of Overpass ended with Gambit leading 8-7 but Heroic put on a strong showing on the T-side to win the match 16-12 and the series 2-0. With this result, the Danes qualified for the main tournament.

Gambit and HellRaisers will have one more chance to qualify in the lower bracket semi-finals which will hand out two more spots at IEM Katowice. You can view the brackets on our event page.

The current team list for IEM Katowice can be found below: