​ELEAGUE announced Tuesday the talent and first-round matches for the New Challengers Stage for the upcoming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major.





The New Challengers Stage, a brand new CS:GO Major round debuting at this event (essentially replacing the offline qualifier), will feature 16 teams: eight who qualified from Minor events and the bottom eight finishers from PGL Major Krakow in July.

The first-round matches were drawn from pools of four teams. Teams in Pool 1 matched up against teams from Pool 4 and teams from Pool 2 matched up with teams from Pool 3.





First-round matches are as follows:

Vega Squadron vs Renegades

mousesports vs AVANGAR

FaZe Clan vs Team Liquid

FlipSid3 Tactics vs Misfits

Sprout vs Space Soldiers

Natus Vincere vs Quantum Bellator Fire

G2 Esports vs Flash Gaming

Cloud9 vs Team EnVyUs





The New Challengers Stage will be played in a ​Swiss best-of-1 format. All eyes will be on FaZe Clan vs. Team Liquid as one of NA's best has an extremely tough match early on in the tournament.





ELEAGUE also revealed Tuesday the talent list for all stages of the Major, featuring well-known faces of the CS:GO community.

The complete talent list is as follows:

Richard Lewis

James Bardolph

Anders Blume

Henry "HenryG" Greer

Daniel 'ddk" Kapadia

Sue "Smix" Lee

Jason "Moses" O'Toole

Yanko "YNk" Paunovic

Matthew "Sadokist" Trivet





The ELEAGUE Major: Boston begins Friday and runs through Jan. 28 with the New Challengers and New Legends stages taking place at the GFUEL ELEAGUE Arena in Atlanta, while the playoffs will be played Jan. 26-28 at the Agganis Arena in Boston.





Photos courtesy of Turner Sports/ELEAGUE