Astralis have opted to miss ESL One: Cologne 2017 in order to focus efforts on preparing for the PGL Major Kraków 2017.
Astralis recently announced that the team will be missing ESL One: Cologne 2017, hosted at the Laxness Arena in Cologne, Germany. The LAN finals of the $250,000 tournament are taking place on July 7th-9th, just one week prior to the highly anticipated $1,000,000 prize pool Major in Kraków, Poland. The Danish squad plans on defending their existing major champions title, as well as potentially securing two back to back major titles. For this particular reason the team has announced that they will be missing the event in Germany, in an effort to prepare as well as they can for the second major of the year.Â
With the Danes missing the event, three teams are currently confirmed to participate, namely 
FaZe Clan, 
SK Gaming and 
Virtus.pro. Sixteen teams in total will participate at the event, fourteen of which are direct invites, leaving two slots to be filled via qualifiers. Speculations circulate regarding other top teams forfeiting their participation at the event due to the close time proximity with the major championship, however no confirmation of such has been expressed by any teams barring the Danes.
For further updates on ESL One: Cologne 2017 such as formatting, invites, prize pool distribution and scheduling stay tuned to GosuGamers.net.
Images courtesy of Astralis Facebook, ESL
