FISSURE has relocated FISSURE Playground 3 to Suzhou, China, moving the Counter-Strike tournament away from Shenzhen, where it had previously been announced. The organizer said the 16-team event will now be played at the SND Cultural and Sports Centre in Suzhou from September 8 to 13, with a prize pool of $1,250,000.
HLTV, which reported the change, describes Suzhou as a city of 12 million people lying roughly 90 kilometers west of Shanghai and forming part of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis. The move keeps the tournament in mainland China, in the same commercial region as Shanghai, where the event’s new production partner is based.
A renumbered event
Playground 3 arrives in Suzhou under a name it did not begin with. The tournament was previously billed as FISSURE Playground 5, and was renumbered following the cancellation of several events from the organizer’s calendar. The renumbering followed those cancellations rather than any change to the tournament itself.
GGMEDIA takes on production
FISSURE said the tournament will also be the first event of a long-term strategic partnership with GGMEDIA, a live media production company based in Shanghai. GGMEDIA recently handled the Asian qualifiers for BLAST Open Porto 2026, giving the company recent Counter-Strike production work in the region ahead of taking on a Playground event.
FISSURE presented the arrangement as an ongoing commitment to the Chinese market rather than a single booking, describing the aim of the partnership as follows.
to host Tier 1 tournaments in China on an annual basis, contributing to the growth of the local esports ecosystem and strengthening its connection with the global competitive scene
The announcement did not say what prompted the move away from Shenzhen. FISSURE has not published the 16-team field for Playground 3, and no schedule has been released beyond the September 8-13 window at the SND Cultural and Sports Centre.
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