ESL has confirmed that their first ESL Pro Tour Masters Championship event of next year, IEM Katowice 2021, won't be played out in a crowd-filled arena due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tournament organizer still plans to host the tournament, scheduled for February 16-28, as an "in-person competition" which will take place at an undisclosed location in Europe. However, ESL will revert to online play instead "should COVID-19 remain a major barrier to the safety of our talent, players and staff".

There will be no CS:GO action in the Spodek Arena this year
Last year's edition of IEM Katowice was the first CS:GO event to be affected by the coronavirus pandemic, seeing the playoffs of the tournament played out in an empty arena, where Natus Vincere lifted the trophy. Since then, ESL has hoped to return to LAN with ESL One Cologne and the IEM Global Challenge, but both events were ultimately reverted to online play.
IEM Katowice 2021 is a 24-team event with a $1,000,000 prize pool, which will award an Intel Grand Slam point and take place in the second part of February. Things will kick off with a play-in tournament (16-17 February), followed by a group stage (18-21 February), and finally, the playoffs (26-28 February), as the dates of the tournament remain unchanged.
Through the ESL Pro Tour points system and feeder tournaments, the following teams have been confirmed for the event:
Group stage:

FURIA

HEROIC

Astralis

G2

Evil Geniuses

Vitality

Natus Vincere

FaZe
Play-In:

Illuminar

Chaos

fnatic

BOOM

TYLOO
Wildcard invite #2
Wildcard invite #4
Wildcard invite #6
Liquid

Complexity

OG

Renegades
Wildcard invite #1
Wildcard invite #3
Wildcard invite #5
EPEC Winter 2020

fnatic #13


Robin 'flusha' Rönnquist

Jesper 'JW' Wecksell

Freddy 'KRIMZ' Johansson

Maikil 'Golden' Selim

Ludvig 'Brollan' Brolin


Renegades #63


Simon 'Sico' Williams

Christopher 'dexter' Nong

Joshua 'INS' Potter

Jordan 'Hatz' Bajic

Liam 'malta' Schembri



Evil Geniuses #15



Peter 'stanislaw' Jarguz

Tarik 'tarik' Celik

Vincent 'Brehze' Cayonte

Ethan 'Ethan' Arnold

Tsvetelin 'CeRq' Dimitrov


BOOM #98


Ricardo 'boltz' Prass

Gustavo 'yel' Knittel

Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes

Bruno 'shz' Martinelli


Liquid #16


Keith 'NAF' Markovic

Jonathan 'EliGE' Jablonowski

Jake 'Stewie2K' Yip

Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken

Michael 'Grim' Wince


Astralis #2


Andreas 'Xyp9x' Højsleth

Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussen

Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossander

Nicolai 'device' Reedtz

Emil 'Magisk' Reif



HEROIC #3



Casper 'cadiaN' Møller

Johannes 'b0RUP' Borup

Nikolaj 'niko' Kristensen

Martin 'stavn' Lund

René 'TeSeS' Madsen


Natus Vincere #4


Egor 'flamie' Vasilyev

Oleksandr 's1mple' Kostyliev

Denis 'electroNic' Sharipov

Kirill 'Boombl4' Mikhailov

Ilya 'Perfecto' Zalutskiy


Vitality #1


Richard 'shox' Papillon

Cédric 'RpK' Guipouy

Dan 'apEX' Madesclaire

Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut

Kévin 'misutaaa' Rabier


Illuminar #35


Janusz 'Snax' Pogorzelski

Paweł 'reatz' Jańczak

Mikołaj 'mouz' Karolewski

Tomasz 'phr' Wójcik

Arek 'Vegi' Nawojski



Complexity #10



Justin 'jks' Savage

William 'RUSH' Wierzba

Kristian 'k0nfig' Wienecke

Valentin 'poizon' Vasilev

Benjamin 'blameF' Bremer


FaZe #12


Olof 'olofmeister' Kajbjer

Håvard 'rain' Nygaard

Markus 'Kjaerbye' Kjærbye

Marcelo 'coldzera' David

Helvijs 'broky' Saukants


Chaos #20


Edgar 'MarKE' Maldonado

Anthony 'vanity' Malaspina

Jonathan 'Jonji' Carey

Erick 'Xeppaa' Bach

Nathan 'leaf' Orf


G2 #9


Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač

Nemanja 'huNter-' Kovač

Kenny 'kennyS' Schrub

François 'amanek' Delaunay

Nemanja 'nexa' Isaković


TYLOO #96


YuLun 'Summer' Cai

YuanZhang 'Attacker' Sheng

HaoWen 'somebody' Xu

Kelun 'SLOWLY' Sun

Zhenghao 'DANK1NG' Lv


FURIA #7


Henrique 'HEN1' Teles

Andrei 'arT' Piovezan

Yuri 'yuurih' Santos

Vinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo

Kaike 'KSCERATO' Cerato


OG #6


Nathan 'NBK-' Schmitt

Valdemar 'valde' Bjørn Vangså

Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen

Issa 'ISSAA' Murad

Mateusz 'mantuu' Wilczewski