SOOP said on Thursday it will introduce a new tournament, the ASL Season Open, as a route to the ASL Season 21 main event.

The [S:21] ASL Season Open is a new competition played in Blizzard Entertainment's RTS game StarCraft: Remastered. Its first round will be held on Feb. 21 and its second round on Feb. 28. The tournament will be held in place of the ACS (Challengers Starleague) and, unlike the existing multi-match league format, will use an open structure that anyone can enter and will be run at a fast pace.

Many top players whose skills and popularity have been proven on the ASL stage have completed applications to participate, including Jaedong (이제동), Yoon-cheol Jang (장윤철), Jae-ho Lee (이재호), Young-jin Yoo (유영진) and Byung-gu Song (송병구). Despite being an open tournament, high-level matches comparable to the ASL main event are expected.

The tournament will use a one-day format in which all schedules from qualifiers to the final are completed within a day. Matches from the qualifiers through the quarterfinals will be single-game. A single-game dual tournament will be applied in the semifinals. The final will be a best-of-three series. New maps to be used in the next season, ASL Season 21, will also be unveiled for the first time through this tournament.

In the tournament, which will be held in two rounds, the 2 winners of each round will receive prize money of 1,000,000 won and a direct seed into the ASL Season 21 round of 24. The first round of the [S:21] ASL Season Open will be broadcast live on SOOP at 12 p.m. on Feb. 21, and the second round at 12 p.m. on Feb. 28.