In July 2018, sixteen teams from around the globe competed in an offline (LAN) tournament that featured a group stage and playoffs with a US$125,000 prize pool.
On April 20, 2018, Valve announced that revamped Dust II would be replacing Cobblestone in the Active Duty map pool.
Renegades dominated competition as the Australian team defeated OpTic Gaming in the finals.
Astralis came in as the best team in the world and proved its dominance by easily handling ENCE eSports.
Although STYKO struggled somewhat, Cloud9 had no problem taking care of Ninjas in Pyjamas, as the Swedes had only a few highlights in the game.
In the first upset of the day, G2 Esports took down the rising Natus Vincere in a very close match as the French were able to overcome a 9–0 deficit as Edouard "SmithZz" Dubourdeaux shined.
In the loser's bracket, ENCE pulled off a massive upset as Aleksi "allu" Jalli was able to completely thrash his former team and the Ninjas in Pyjamas were eliminated.
ENCE somehow managed to pull off an even bigger upset against mousesports by sweeping the decorated European squad in two close maps as allu took revenge on another one of his former teams.
Natus Vincere and Cloud9 were also part of a very close series, but it was s1mple to outduel Timothy "autimatic" Ta to eliminate Cloud9.
In the winner's finals match, G2 made a massive comeback against the world's best, but Astralis was able to take the map into overtime.
Astralis took that small wave of momentum into the next map and finished off G2 with ease to guarantee a spot in the semifinals.
mibr made its Global Offensive debut after signing one of CS:GO's most successful cores, but the legendary Brazilian brand struggled against the Noah "Nifty" Francis-lead Renegades.
However, Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo's team showed signs of its old self: making improbable comebacks.
Despite Renegades's 6–0 start and 10–5 halftime score, Marcelo "coldzera" David and Fernando "fer" Alvarenga showed why they were ranked as the best and third best players in 2017.
BIG seemed eager to play in front of its home crowd and after picking up Owen "smooya" Butterfield, the team showed rapid paces of improvement.
Although Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski topped the scoreboard out of all the ten players, the rest of his Liquid teammates struggled.
In the other winner's match, Fnatic was able streak away with the series win after a close first half on the first map as the Swedes advance to the playoffs.
In the loser's side, Renegades made quick work of B.O.O.T-dream[S]cape and eliminated the Singaporeans.
Na'Vi eventually reached a 15-4 scoreling, but Fnatic started a massive comeback by getting eight unanswered rounds.
Fnatic would try to start another comeback, but it was too late as Na'Vi closed out the series, led by Egor "flamie" Vasilyev's 54 kills.
The dark horse of the tournament made it to the Lanxess Arena in front of its home crowd against G2's new lineup.
In the end, it was BIG to pull off what some would consider an upset over the French despite kennyS's massive 42 kills.
BIG would push that one round loss off to the side and simply close out the game 16–1 to cruise to the semifinals, as smooya lead his team with 48 kills in the series.
Astralis would fight back in the next map on Nuke as the world's number one took a 7–0 lead before Na'Vi got one on the board.
However, a force buy from the Danes proved successful as suddenly Astralis was only down one round after winning five unanswered.
BIG was led by Fatih "gob b" Dayik to take the last two rounds in regulation to send the game to overtime.
However, on a map that is considered to be slightly terrorist sided, Na'Vi made it look lopsided as the CIS team took down the defense of BIG.