Hey everyone! Tom here, Chair of the European Legacy Masters and proud ELM representative for Belgium. The finals of ELM25 are about to take place on August 10th, and just like every year, the ELM committee has been working tirelessly to make this edition even better than the last one. Today I would like to give you all some insights into what’s new this year, and feature some of our partners, without whom none of this would be possible.

Arrivederci Bologna, hallo Hasselt!

For the past three years, ELM was held at 4Seasons Bologna. And what tremendous hosts they have been! They gave us a wonderful space to play, a pro-level judge team to carry the tournament, and most importantly, their vote of confidence, which helped establish our credibility from the start. It cannot be understated just how instrumental the lovely people at 4Seasons have been in making this project viable at all.

However, when we conceptualized ELM, we always dreamed of it taking place at different locations across Europe, similar to the Champions League finals in football. There’s a few motivations for this:

• It shuffles the burden of travel around. Having the event at the same location each year, means the same communities will have the easiest and hardest time to make it to ELM. By moving locations every so often, we can balance that out a little bit.
• As much as we are flattered by people thinking that we are a part of 4Seasons, we deserve none of the accolades that team rightfully receives, for running such stellar events. 
• It allows ELM to serve as not just a catalyst for local play, but also as a potential tool for ambitious Tournament Organizers looking to level-up their big event. Hosting ELM helps to promote the event, and guarantees that over 100 players will be committed to traveling to it.

This last scenario materialized in mid-2024 when Simon from Emjati, one of our sponsors, approached us to talk about their plans for a new Eternal event, to be held in Hasselt, Belgium. And so, after three amazing years in Italy, ELM is taking its first flight out of our proverbial nest.

Assuming all goes well, Eternal Mania will be our new home for the next few editions of ELM, and we hope that our competitors all have a great time at this new exciting event.

A different League

2025 marked the birth of another ambitious tournament concept, the European Unity League. This fantastic project, spearheaded by Jari Rentsch from Switzerland, took some of the same principles we applied for ELM, and then dialed them up to eleven.

• Support for all formats, not just Legacy
• At all levels of play, from FNM to Regional Championship
• Culminating in the European Magic Cup, a multi-format final with a €20.000 (!!) prize pool, which will take place in Italy during Q1 of 2026.
• With a professional organization and website behind it all.

Perhaps unbeknownst to you, many ELM Qualifiers this year also counted towards the Unity League rankings – and if yours didn’t, do talk to your TO about it, since any local event can sign up for free.

But wait, there’s more! The European Unity League have graciously offered to count the 2025 European Legacy Masters as a Grand Prix event. What this means is that:

• The winner of ELM25 will receive a direct invite to the European Magic Cup!
• ELM25 will count towards the EUL rankings, with a 6x multiplier.

The people behind the European Unity Legacy are all extremely passionate, and we at ELM are very excited to see their project grow and prosper. United we stand!

Don’t change a winning team

Over these past four years, we have forged many great partnerships with some of the most amazing people in the Eternal community. For ELM25, the following parties have confirmed their continued support:

From the community, for the community

Finally, there was one big change behind the scenes, regarding ELM’s financing model and prize pool. For the previous 3 editions, the European Legacy Masters were funded purely by our aforementioned sponsors, and by individual  committee members paying for our (luckily, limited) expenses. Since this season, that is no longer the case. Our actual biggest sponsor now is… all of you!

Since the beginning of this season, we have started to charge the organizers of ELM qualifiers a small fee of €0.50 per player (capped at €50 per event). There are a couple of main reasons for why we did this:

• Grow our prize pool: although we try to attract additional sponsors every year, there are actually not that many sponsorship opportunities in the Magic ecosystem that can truly benefit from partnering with ELM. Bundling the forces of all of our TOs through small individual contributions was the easiest and most reliable way to increase this year’s offering to our players.
• Stabilize our revenues: sponsorships can come and go, which adds uncertainty to our organization, and requires team members to invest their personal time in developing new relationships. Having some stable revenues outside of sponsorships, lets us guarantee a certain amount of prizes for every edition.
• Take on some of our own expenses: as much as we appreciate the generosity of our reps, who have historically paid for many of our expenses (web hosting, trophies, streaming gear,…) out of their own pockets, this obviously isn’t a sustainable model. If we want ELM to continue, we need a (small) amount of actual money in order to cover basic expenses.

Thanks to these contributions from all of our TOs, the ELM25 prize pool will be expanded by over €1000 worth of prize money. The exact amount will be specified soon, as we are currently still collecting some outstanding fees.

In Unity lies Strength

ELM is what happens when you combine the tireless passion of the community, with the unimaginable generosity of many amazing actors. We are incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved thus far, and grateful for the amazing support we have gotten from all of you. More than ever, we are optimistic about what the future will bring for our project, and for Legacy as a whole.

Thank you all for being part of this incredible journey so far, and we hope to see you all at Eternal Mania in person, or in our twitch chat as we stream the event live on August 10th.

Legacy is dead. 🤡
Long live Legacy! 👑