WESG is the largest nation-based tournament

The new World Electronic Sports Games is looking to become one of the largest esports events ever.

With a total prize pool of $3.7 million, the competition will feature national teams in four separate games: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Hearthstone, and StarCraft 2. The LAN-finals will be held in China this December. The tournament is hosted by StarSeries and Imba.TV and is funded by Alisports, the sporting division of Alibaba, one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the world.

There is one detail that makes this competition stand out from the crowd: any team looking to participate has to field a roster from only one nation. This seriously complicates matters for CS:GO and Dota 2, as most top teams feature international rosters.

Each region will have a separate qualifier event. Most notable are the WESG European Regional Qualifiers with Regional Finals that will take place in Kyiv, Ukraine, on the 6-9 of October. 8 best teams and 8 individual players in each game from Europe and CIS will get a slot to play at the WESG Global Grand Finals in China. The EU qualifiers also feature a dedicated prize pool of $205,000.

Other qualifier regions are Africa and the Middle East, North and South Americas, China, and APAC. Africa and the Middle East qualifiers have already finished and the dates for the rest of the events will be announced at a later date.