hello

we are going to extend the sign-up period for the next two weeks, so they will end the end of this month (31.05.2025 23:59 CEST)

i got asked a few questions, so i'd like to give follow ups here:
- we're going to gather entry payments after signups and qualification stage (if needed), together with spectator tickets, so we are welcoming every single player who want to chill with their friends (except people who cannot participate due to clear etf2l/rgl ban policy 1 month in advance), but not play necessarily
- for those, who have never been in the BaseStack venue, here is how seating would look like: https://seats.poland.tf
after we close signups, we will let you reserve spots; if we are going to host a qualification stage, we will let invite teams pick first, then qualified teams, otherwise first come first server
- the tournament will be casted on essentials.tf Twitch
- the venue will be open on thursday too, so you can come early and play some matches before the tournament start

i'm going to discuss internally our possibilities to extend signups; we are very likely to do it, but I rather to double check with the rest of staff
we are going to do what it takes to make sure as much people as possible will sign up to the tournament

i was also asked about a situation where you get 9 players but later on you will have to replace somebody for random reasons (player sudden unavailability, denied visa etc) you can make roster changes later, however during the qualification stage you cannot change the roster without staff approval
during qualis we will allow for 2 subs per team

WHERE
BaseStack Łódź
Rewolucji 1905 Roku 45
90-215 Łódź
Polska (Poland)

WHEN
18-20.07.2025, Friday-Sunday (games are in all days)

EVENT LINK
https://poland.tf
https://discord.poland.tf or https://discord.gg/C3TWmwj

SIGN-UPS
Sign-ups are invite based with a qualification system.
They will be open now. We are going to host the qualification stage in mid May.
Only 9v9 team-based sign-ups for players. Team registrations are made by covering entire team costs by the captain. There are 90 seats available, making us capable of hosting 10 teams.
You can sign up here: https://signup.poland.tf
Sign up are open until the end of 14.05.2025.

QUALIFICATION STAGE
All interested parties except invite teams must sign-up to the qualifications in order to participate.
ETF2L 9v9 map pool and ruleset from the latest season is applied.

TOURNAMENT FORMAT
2x5 round robin groups for the group stage
double elimination playoffs without skipping first round (all teams start in the upper bracket) and without grand final reset in case upper bracket team wins.
The format is a subject of change if teams are interested in some enticing format, as we did for 6v6 tourneys.
Map pool as well as the whitelist will be decided by all participating players.

PRIZEPOOL
TBA
if you are interested in sponsoring this event, contact us at staff@poland.tf or @suprovsky on Discord

ENTRANCE FEE
400 PLN/player (94 EUR/103 USD/78 GBP), 70 PLN/spectator (17 EUR/18 USD/14 GBP)

Fee includes:
- one drink for spectators
- full PC rental (240 Hz/144 Hz FHD screen, PC capable of running TF2 on 240 fps, full perhiperals set) for players

hey! this time we are coming back with a Highlander tournament; I really wanted to make this one for a quite some time as we didn't have such events for years
the last tournament with such possibilities like here was DeutschLAN and I would love to make it so people remember it like many remember DeutschLAN to this day

we are also raising funds for the event organization; as you know, all the events we make are entirely crowdfunded in terms of operational costs, together with our current balance we will need around 5000 PLN in order to cover expenses we expect (we are transparent with it, you can see the details here)
we appreciate all donations, big and small as all of them make us able to make this event happen
>>> DONATE HERE <<<

little update, we are going to make it happen on 18-20.07.2025, however i'll announce it a bit later this month
qualis somewhere at the end of april/first half of may

UPDATE: 18-20.07.2025, not 18-20.08.2025, thanks Clark for noticing my mistake

doesn't it create an input lag? (upscaling)

you can find a photo gallery from the LAN here: https://c.supra.tf/s/polandtf2025

shoutout to my team, this event organization was flawless and i couldn't do it without you all, we got to a point we are doing it so well, so i wasn't stressed about anything at all throughout the entire weekend and having this peace of mind that i can entrust other parts of the event organization to the right people without any worry feels great
shoutout to the BaseStack Łódź, i love that we work together for the same goal which is joy for all attendees, having to work with people who are also gamers like all of us makes things so easy, just feels like we are all alike
shoutout to all people who donated us, especially DrHappiness as this can let us stay afloat and continue making these cool events to happen
shoutout to EssentialsTF as a whole, a wonderful partner anyone would want to work with
shoutout to hexell, deli, ike and mpk02 for a lot of tekken 8/street fighter 6 games
shoutout to everyone i spoke with, i am so happy for all kind words i got for making it happen, this gratefulness is something empowering us to do keep making these events happen
shoutout to beavern, dempsey, samski, nevo, cuby and whip, i love you guys, you are awesome

hopefully see you next year or for highlander gamers see you this summer

i would like to bump this a little, we got 73 responses where 52 players are interested in playing
if we get 72 players interested in playing which is an equivalent of 8 teams, we are going to make it
during poLANd.tf 2025 i spoke with a BaseStack Łódź venue manager and they are interested in partnering with us for this event as well

we have to wrap this form up until the end of this month, so we have enough time to find a sponsor and get the organization machine going
ps: i was already asked by many people if we are considering doing 6v6 in the summer instead and the answer is no
the reason why is that we believe that UBERFEST 2025 will happen, but in a different venue and maybe slightly different time, we really hope for it to happen and we don't want to compete with other event at the time for potential players

as 6v6 tournament, this team will have sign-up based on the teams only and if we have bigger interest than seats available we will have qualification stage here as well

Schedule
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sx_gtdTc81fDad5T_BO9bgcmmkH6e0PGMEhiMycpwUY/edit?usp=sharing

Bracket
https://play.toornament.com/en_US/tournaments/8478639619319611392/

Broadcast
We are going to cast games on two streams simultaneously, thanks to EssentialsTF and Fireside Casts.

Tickets
By now you should all have it on your mailbox. Please check it. If you didn't get it on your mailbox, open a ticket in on our Discord and we will check why.
Tickets are tied to a name/surname. After entering the premises for the first time you must get your ticket scanned by our staff.
You can recognize us by seeing yellow event badges.
You will be given one where you have a place to write in your name on both sides and you should be wearing it at all times in the BaseStack.

Opening hours
Friday 10:00-02:00
Saturday 10:00-02:00
Sunday 10:00-00:00

You can also come in on Thursday as BaseStack operates in a normal-day basis.

Support us!
Making this tournament incurs costs we have to cover. We have gathered 50 PLN, where in order to have positive balance, we need to gather between 4500-5000 PLN.
We appreciate all donations, regardless of the size. You can help us here: https://donate.poland.tf

here you can buy the spectator ticket https://basestack.gg/lodz/hidden-events/poland-tf-2025-spectators/
or here https://basestack.gg/lodz/pl/hidden-events/poland-tf-2025-spectators/

80, but the owner said they can consider allowing a bit more if its sold out

hello @everyone
we are going to have the last match in the Qualifications Stage hosted on https://twitch.tv/essentialstf at 21:15 CET tomorrow against Mr McVities, LANstanding HobNobs and curse of rah where the winner will advance to the main tournament!
that means we will be able to start Spectator ticket sale soon and we'll start on Thursday at 19:00 CET; I'll post the website for tickets here and on Team Fortress 2 Polska Discord; tickets cost 70 PLN and you can pay by card (no PayPal as far as I know) or BLIK

moreover, i've been ask by a lot of players by Highlander players if we could organize an event and that could be doable if the interest in such event is big enough, more info can be found about it here: https://www.teamfortress.tv/65361/eu-hl-lan-maybe
we have to have like 70 players interested in playing in order to organize it, so if you would like to be a part of it, find the poll if the tftv thread!

Hey, I was asked by a lot of various people if there would be a possibility of having a Highlander LAN hosted by us and I see a possibility here; currently we do not plan to host a TF2 LAN during the summer time, especially because we would be competing with ÜBERFEST 2025 (which we don't want to do) and during the summer
I've been hosting some more chill LANs during summer under the name of LANsilesia and now poLANd.tf around my birthday time (mid July), so that could fit perfectly here
we'd very likely keep the current ticket costs which is 400 PLN/seat with full pc setup and 70 for a spectator and that would be friday-saturday-sunday
the venue (BaseStack Łódź) can offer us 87 seats, so that would be enough for 9 Highlander teams (tho we'd try to make a 8 team tournament very likely)
I've made an interest poll on a couple of Highlander related Discord and thru old players spreading the news and at the moment we have 55 players interested, from which 40 are dedicted to play on the event
you know I LOVE HIGHLANDER and i would be happy to make it especially because the last Highlander dedicated event was DeutschLAN (only boomers know) was like 8-9 years ago

if you want to make the change and be happy to be a part of it, please sign up here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVeasR_c7siG-3EMLf2dfI_I2Of5BlLAf_iFD-a2nRVlvnpg/viewform?usp=header

there won't be a fix ever because valve must approve it to work with tf2 without -insecure parameter and they said they won't do it
use in-game recording
hopefully they will merge p-rec features into tf2 so it works better, as it was proposed like one year ago

hello! we are going to start the Qualification Stage today with an important change: we have decided to move the following teams straight into the competition:
Sammakot
TheDogs
#BIGBLOKELAN

unfortunately Duplo has dropped from the competition, so we have 10 teams left fighting for 5 spots, so we are going to have 2 groups with 5 teams each playing in the Round Robin format
two the best teams in each group will advance to the main event and third places from both groups will have to play a knockout match in order to draw out 5th the best team
tournament page and rules can be found here: https://play.toornament.com/en_US/tournaments/8420627550019149824/
you can play all of the matches until 30.01.2025 23:59 CET and default dates are:
Round 1: 14.01.2025 21:15 CET
Round 2: 16.01.2025 21:15 CET
Round 3: 21.01.2025 21:15 CET
Round 4: 23.01.2025 21:15 CET
Round 5: 28.01.2025 21:15 CET
you are free to reschedule these as long as you play them and submit the score within the deadline
Extra default date for tiebreak matches: 04.02.2025 21:15 CET
Knockout Match: 4.02.2025 21:15 CET (must be played before 5.02.2025 23:59 CET)

you can use one merc per match only if your opponent agrees on them, rosters cannot be changed unless allowed by the tournament admin
for other rules please have a look on the rules page, everything is outlined there and if you have any questions feel free to contact us through #poland-tf-faq-en tickets on the poLANd.tf Discord