Gamescom in Cologne, Germany on August 15 will be the site of Starcraft 2's Intel Extreme Masters new season and will also bring a new format to the event.

IEM's seventh season's path to the World Championship will have each stop sixteen to twenty four players participating. The sixteen will qualify through an online tournament and the remaining eight will be picked from the 32-man open tournament, which will be played on the first day of the event. The SC2 professionals will make up half of the 32 spots and the rest will be given on a first come first served basis to those who will show up in person and sign up.

Four double elimination brackets will be the format of the open tournament. The winners of the WB and LB will advance to the pool play with a high and low seed, respectively.

The online qualifiers meanwhile will consist of several tournaments, which will commence with the three stage European qualifier on July 12 to 19. Please check out the two infographics below on how the tournament is set up, thankfully provided by ESL World.