“What a terrible format BLAST came up with” — STORM criticizes tournament organizers

Commentator Oleksii STORM_Q Tumanov criticized the BLAST Slam V format on his Telegram channel. According to him, the system looks questionable and gives no real value to the five-day group stage. He also noted that the current format makes the group results almost meaningless and creates unnecessary breaks.

The format is terrible. It would be fine if someone got eliminated after the group stage, but instead we get five days of round-robin just for everything to be decided in one or two Bo3s. The only good thing is that 1st–2nd places go straight to the playoffs, but the playoffs happening a week after the groups is highly questionable.

Starting from BLAST SLAM IV, the organizers completely changed the tournament format, abandoning the usual two-group system.

Now teams play in a round-robin BO1 format. The 1st–2nd place teams advance directly to the playoff semifinals, while the rest go to Last Chance and Play-In, where only four slots for the playoffs are decided.

The organizers also introduced a week-long break between the group stage and the playoffs, citing scheduling conflicts with other tournaments.

BLAST SLAM V runs from 25.11.2025 to 07.12.2025 in Chengdu, China. 12 teams compete for a $1,000,000 prize pool. You can follow the tournament in the live report.

Recently, Tumanov interviewed support Oleksii kaori Medvedok, who played for MOUZ as a stand-in at PGL Wallachia Season 6, where the European team won the championship. The player spoke about joining a new team for himself and shared his plans for the future.

Earlier, Cyberscore shared bookmakers’ opinions on the BLAST Slam V favorites.