Draft:Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024

The Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 will be the second Counter-Strike 2 Major Championship and 21st Counter-Strike Major overall. It will be held in Shanghai, China, and will be the first Major organized by Perfect World. Twenty-four teams will participate for the tournament, which will include a prize pool of US$1,250,000.

Background
Counter-Strike 2 is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It is the fifth game in the Counter-Strike series. In professional Counter-Strike, the Valve-sponsored Majors are considered the most prestigious tournaments.

The defending Major champions are Natus Vincere, following a 2–1 victory over FaZe Clan at Copenhagen 2024.

Format
On November 4, 2023, it was announced that Valve had renamed the Major's stages from Challengers Stage, Legends Stage and Champions Stage to "Opening Stage", "Elimination Stage" and "Playoffs Stage", respectively.

Like previous Majors using a Swiss-system group stage, twenty-four teams will qualify for the tournament. This includes sixteen teams who qualify for the Opening Stage. The top eight teams from the Opening Stage move on to the Elimination Stage, along with eight teams directly from the Regional Major Ranking (RMR) qualifiers. Finally, the top eight teams from the Elimination Stage will play a single-elimination Playoffs Stage to determine a champion.

In the first two stages, all matches except for progression or elimination matches, which are played as bests-of-three, are played in a best-of-one format. All matches in the Playoff Stage are played in a best-of-three format.

Map pool

 * TBD

Qualification
Qualification took place through three Regional Major Ranking events, based on teams' geographical regions, events were held in Europe, Americas and Asia. Unlike in previous Majors where teams were seeded according to performance at RMRs, a number of Opening Stage and Elimination Stage places will instead be distributed according to Valve's own regional standings.

Seven teams from Europe and one team from the Americas RMRs who qualified earned direct berths to the Elimination Stage, in accordance with the number of each region's teams that advanced from the Challengers Stage to the Legends Stage of Paris 2023.

Opening Stage
On November 4, 2023, it was announced that Valve had renamed the Challengers Stage and Legends Stage of the Major to "Opening Stage" and "Elimination Stage" respectively. Teams would also be seeded into these stages according to their regional standings. Like previous Majors using a Swiss-system bracket, sixteen teams will compete for eight Elimination Stage spots, with all matches besides elimination and progression matches, which are bests-of-three, being bests-of-one.

Elimination Stage
Like the Opening Stage, the Elimination Stage is played in a Swiss-system bracket, with eight teams advancing to a single-elimination Playoffs Stage. The Elimination Stage includes the eight teams that advance from the Opening Stage, as well as the seven highest teams from the Europe RMR and the highest team from the Americas RMR in Valve's regional standings. Matches are played in the same format as in the Opening Stage.

Playoffs Stage
The top eight teams from the Elimination Stage will advance to a single-elimination bracket. Each match in the Playoffs Stage is played in a best-of-three format.