Ninjas in Pyjamas, TeamOne and Wisla Krakow will take part in the IEM Katowice Play-In stage, replacing TYLOO, Chaos and Illuminar, ESL announced on Friday. Due to the current travel restrictions in place, the tournament organiser decided to find replacements for the trio four weeks before to the event's start date and not just two weeks as it normally would.
TYLOO, who had qualified for the event after topping the Asian Road to Rio rankings, were forced to cancel their attendance due to travel issues. ViCi and TIGER, the next teams in line in the ranking, both experienced similar issues - leaving ESL with no choice but to transfer the slot to the home region of the tournament, Europe. Ninjas in Pyjamas received the invitation as the next European team in the ESL Pro Tour standings.
NiP will compete in IEM Katowice Play-In TeamOne will take the spot that belonged to Chaos, whose players went their separate ways at the end of 2020 after the organisation decided to leave Counter-Strike, as the next eligible team in the ESL Pro Tour North American standings. The Brazilian team, who recently added Felipe "skullz" Medeiros and Cássio "cass1n" Santos to their roster, will travel to Europe this weekend to bootcamp and participate in the IEM tournament.
Wisla Krakow were called in as a replacement due to finishing in second place in the qualifying event, ESL Polish Championships Autumn, after Illuminar told ESL that they would not be able to field an eligible lineup for the tournament. The Polish organisation benched its entire roster last month, with Paweł "reatz" Jańczak, Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski and Arek "Vegi" Nawojski having since joined different teams.
The IEM Katowice Play-In stage will be held from February 16-17 and will offer eight spots in the main competition, in which $1 million will be up for grabs. Both stages will be held online as the transition to LAN play in ESL competitions will begin only in the Spring with the playoff stage of ESL Pro League Season 13.
The team list for IEM Katowice Play-In is the following:
Complexity
fnatic
OG
Liquid
Gambit
Cloud9
Movistar Riders
TeamOne
MIBR
Renegades
BIG
MOUZ
Virtus.pro
Spirit
Ninjas in Pyjamas
Wisla Krakow 
Renegades #44 
Simon 'Sico' Williams
Christopher 'dexter' Nong
Joshua 'INS' Potter
Jordan 'Hatz' Bajic
Liam 'malta' Schembri 
Virtus.pro #11 
Sanjar 'SANJI' Kuliev
Timur 'buster' Tulepov
Alexey 'Qikert' Golubev
Dzhami 'Jame' Ali
Mareks 'YEKINDAR' Gaļinskis 
Cloud9 #21 
Alex 'ALEX' McMeekin
Patrick 'es3tag' Hansen
Ricky 'floppy' Kemery
William 'mezii' Merriman 
TIGER #74 
Gan-Erdene 'dobu' Batbold
Bat-Enkh 'kabal' Batbayar
Yesuntumur 'nin9' Gantulga
Boldbaatar 'rate' Tengis
Sodbileg 'cool4st' Batbaatar
Cássio 'cass1n' Santos
Age: 18 Team: No team Rating 1.0: 1.11 Maps played: 16 KPR: 0.74 DPR: 0.63 
ViCi #40 
Zhuo 'advent' Liang
WeiJie 'zhokiNg' Zhong
ZhiHong 'aumaN' Liu
Andrew 'kaze' Khong
Yi 'JamYoung' Yang 
Wisla Krakow #49 
Grzegorz 'SZPERO' Dziamałek
Patryk 'ponczek' Wites
Grzegorz 'jedqr' Jędras
Olek 'hades' Miskiewicz 
OG #6 
Nathan 'NBK-' Schmitt
Valdemar 'valde' Bjørn Vangså
Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen
Issa 'ISSAA' Murad
Mateusz 'mantuu' Wilczewski 

MIBR #53 

Ricardo 'boltz' Prass
Gustavo 'yel' Knittel
Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes
Bruno 'shz' Martinelli
Daniel 'danoco' Morgado 

Arek 'Vegi' Nawojski
Age: 20 Team: PACT Rating 1.0: 0.98 Maps played: 599 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.71 
MOUZ #10 
Finn 'karrigan' Andersen
Chris 'chrisJ' de Jong
David 'frozen' Čerňanský
Robin 'ropz' Kool
Aurimas 'Bymas' Pipiras 
Ninjas in Pyjamas #16 
Simon 'twist' Eliasson
Fredrik 'REZ' Sterner
Hampus 'hampus' Poser
Tim 'nawwk' Jonasson
Nicolas 'Plopski' Gonzalez Zamora 
Movistar Riders #35 
Lucas 'steel' Lopes
Alejandro 'alex' Masanet
Alejandro 'mopoz' Fernández-Quejo Cano
Kristjan 'shokz' Jakobson 
Chaos 

Liquid #8 
Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo
Keith 'NAF' Markovic
Jonathan 'EliGE' Jablonowski
Jake 'Stewie2K' Yip
Michael 'Grim' Wince 

Spirit #19 

Leonid 'chopper' Vishnyakov
Nikolay 'mir' Bityukov
Viktor 'sdy' Orudzhev
Abdul 'degster' Gasanov
Boris 'magixx' Vorobiev 

BIG #4 

Johannes 'tabseN' Wodarz
Tizian 'tiziaN' Feldbusch
Florian 'syrsoN' Rische
Ismailcan 'XANTARES' Dörtkardeş
Nils 'k1to' Gruhne 
Paweł 'reatz' Jańczak
Age: 26 Team: AGO Rating 1.0: 1.02 Maps played: 1259 KPR: 0.70 DPR: 0.67 
Felipe 'skullz' Medeiros
Age: 18 Team: TeamOne Rating 1.0: 1.02 Maps played: 165 KPR: 0.69 DPR: 0.67 
Illuminar 

Gambit #13 
Abay 'HObbit' Khassenov
Timofey 'interz' Yakushin
Sergey 'Ax1Le' Rykhtorov
Dmitry 'sh1ro' Sokolov
Vladislav 'nafany' Gorshkov 

Complexity #12 

Justin 'jks' Savage
William 'RUSH' Wierzba
Kristian 'k0nfig' Wienecke
Valentin 'poizon' Vasilev
Benjamin 'blameF' Bremer 
TeamOne #27 
Pedro 'Maluk3' Campos
Matheus 'prt' Scuvero
Mario 'malbsMd' Samayoa
Matheus 'pesadelo' Panisset
Felipe 'skullz' Medeiros 
Chaos #20 
Edgar 'MarKE' Maldonado
Anthony 'vanity' Malaspina
Jonathan 'Jonji' Carey
Erick 'Xeppaa' Bach
Nathan 'leaf' Orf 

Janusz 'Snax' Pogorzelski
Age: 27 Team: Anonymo Rating 1.0: 1.04 Maps played: 1840 KPR: 0.71 DPR: 0.66 
TYLOO #85 
YuLun 'Summer' Cai
YuanZhang 'Attacker' Sheng
HaoWen 'somebody' Xu
Kelun 'SLOWLY' Sun
Zhenghao 'DANK1NG' Lv 
fnatic #15 
Jesper 'JW' Wecksell
Freddy 'KRIMZ' Johansson
Maikil 'Golden' Selim
Ludvig 'Brollan' Brolin
Jack 'Jackinho' Ström Mattsson