It was the ninth Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship[1] and was held at the Lanxess Arena In Cologne, Germany from July 8–10.

SK Gaming defeated FlipSid3 Tactics and Virtus.pro and Team Liquid upset Natus Vincere and Fnatic to reach the finals.

SK Gaming also joined Fnatic to be the only teams to have multiple major titles.

The top eight teams from the MLG Columbus Major ("Legends") were automatically invited to ESL One Cologne 2016.

The remaining eight spots were filled by teams that advanced from the ESL One Cologne 2016 Main Qualifier.

These 16 teams were then split into four groups, seeded based on results from Columbus 2016 and the Cologne 2016 Main Qualifier.

The teams that placed fifth through eighth at Columbus 2016 – Fnatic, Virtus.pro, Counter Logic Gaming, and Ninjas in Pyjamas – were randomly assigned the second seeds in the group.

Finally, the top four teams from Columbus 2016 – SK Gaming (formerly Luminosity Gaming), Natus Vincere, Astralis, and Team Liquid – were randomly given the top seeds in the four respective groups.

In all best-of-three series, each team first banned a map, leaving a five-map pool.

The winner and runner-up of Intel Extreme Masters Season X Taipei were invited to the qualifier.

The bottom eight teams from MLG Columbus 2016 received automatic bids to the main qualifier.

Two teams each from the Asia, North America, Europe, and CIS Minors will be able to compete in the major qualifier.

Stage Hosts Analysts Commentators All streams were broadcast on Twitch in various languages.

The HLTV.org July 4, 2016, ranking, the final one released before ESL One Cologne 2016, is displayed below.

CS:GO analyst Duncan "Thorin" Shields called it the hardest group of all time.