DreamHack Anaheim 2022 festival canceled
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The planned return of DreamHack Anaheim has been canceled, according to a statement released by DreamHack. The event was slated to be held from Feb. 11-13, 2022, following a cancelation in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision to cancel the event came from “increased difficulties in hosting the festival in a qualitative way.”

“We were all really looking forward to our first in-person festival in the United States in two years, so canceling DreamHack Anaheim was not an easy decision,” Krzysztof Pikiewicz, the SVP of Festivals at ESL Gaming, said. “However, DreamHack creates a space for our community to connect, explore, win, play and be themselves through an interactive, gaming lifestyle experience and we simply didn’t feel like Anaheim would be able to live up to that in February.”

The cancelation comes just days after DreamHack Day, where the entire 2022 schedule was unveiled. Pikiewicz said in the statement that they are now shifting their focus to delivering the next events in the calendar, DreamHack Dallas and DreamHack Summer in June.

To accommodate the cancelation of the festival, changes have been made to two of the planned esports events that were supposed to be held at DreamHack Anaheim. The HCS NA Regional Championship will still take place as a stand-alone event on the same dates at the same venue.

The ESL Challenger event in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive “will be released at a later date.” The winner of the ESL Challenger tournament receives instant qualification to the ESL Pro League Conference Season 16. The qualifiers for ESL Challenger Anaheim already took place, with four teams qualifying out of four different regions: Double Poney (European Qualifier), Extra Salt (North American Qualifier), 9z Team (South American Qualifier) and ORDER (Oceanic Qualifier). Four more invited teams have not yet been selected.

Anyone who has already purchased tickets for the now-canceled DreamHack Anaheim will be refunded and will also be offered free entry to the NA Regional Championship event.

Following the cancelation of DreamHack Anaheim, the updated DreamHack festivals schedule for 2022 is as follows:

Dallas, Texas, U.S. — June 3-5
DreamHack Summer, Jönköping, Sweden — June 18-21
Valencia, Spain — July 1-3
Melbourne, Australia — Sep. 2-4
Rotterdam, Netherlands — Oct. 14-16
Hyderabad, India — Oct. 29-31
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. — Nov. 18-20
DreamHack Winter, Jönköping, Sweden — Nov. 26–28
Madrid, Spain — Dec. 9–11


Coby Zucker is Upcomer's resident CS:GO writer. He's also played League of Legends at the collegiate level and is a frequent visitor in TFT Challenger Elo. He's a firm believer that Toronto should be the next big esports hub city.


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