DraculaN Season 8: Bucharest open LAN returns in December with up to US$50,000

Digital Crusade has announced DraculaN Season 8, an open Counter-Strike 2 LAN tournament that will be played in Bucharest from 15 to 20 December 2026. The event offers 24 slots and a prize pool of up to US$50,000, with sign-ups opening on 19 November at 17:00 CET.

The announcement arrived on 12 November, less than a month after the previous edition finished in the Romanian capital. It gives the series a third regular season in a single year and places it among the last LAN stops of the 2026 calendar, starting two days after the PGL Major Singapore ends on 13 December.

What has been announced

• Event: DraculaN Season 8, a Counter-Strike 2 LAN tournament
• Organiser: Digital Crusade
• Dates: 15-20 December 2026
• Location: Bucharest, Romania
• Slots: 24 teams
• Prize pool: up to US$50,000
• Registration: opens on 19 November at 17:00 CET

The detail to watch is the prize money. The organiser is promoting a US$50,000 pool, but that figure has been described as a ceiling, with the final amount depending on how many teams sign up. Teams planning the trip should treat US$50,000 as the maximum on offer, not a guaranteed sum, until registration closes.

How the format is expected to work

The format currently listed for Season 8 divides the 24 teams into eight round-robin groups of three, with every group match played as a best-of-one. Nobody is eliminated at that point. Group winners move directly into the playoffs, while the teams finishing second and third drop into a single-elimination play-in played as best-of-three series.

The playoffs are listed as a double-elimination bracket, again with best-of-three series. In practice the group stage decides how long each team's road will be, and the double-elimination bracket gives every playoff team a second life before it leaves Bucharest. Registration has not yet opened and the field is unknown, so these details could still be adjusted before the first match.

A series that keeps growing

DraculaN has scaled up quickly during 2026. The sixth edition, played from 29 March to 2 April, put 24 teams in Bucharest for US$15,000. Season 7 followed from 19 to 23 October with another 24-team field and US$35,000. Season 8 now raises the ceiling to US$50,000, more than three times the spring figure.

Between those regular seasons the organiser also staged Super DraculaN, a 16-team event with a US$150,000 prize pool whose finals were opened to the public in Bucharest on 27 and 28 June. The regular seasons have stayed closer to the series' roots: compact, multi-day LANs with a large field and a dense match schedule.

Season 8 has been described as an open LAN, meaning the route in is registration, not a closed invite list. It has not been said whether any slots will be held back for invited teams. At the sixth edition, eight teams were invited straight into the playoffs while sixteen others started in the groups.

Why it matters for teams in the region

The event is listed as a Valve Tier 2 tournament. For squads outside the very top of the rankings, a week of LAN matches against two dozen opponents is hard to find in December. Most of the calendar's attention will be on the Major and the off-season that follows it.