Six teams came through the BLAST Open Fall 2026 group stage to reach the playoffs in Porto, Portugal, running from September 4 to September 6 at the Super Bock Arena. Spirit and MOUZ finished first in their groups and were seeded into the semi-finals, while Falcons, G2, FURIA and Vitality entered a round earlier, Esports.gg reported. The bracket paired Falcons with G2 and FURIA with Vitality in the quarter-finals, with a best-of-five grand final closing the five-match stage.
Spirit reached Portugal without dropping a map, winning all three of their group series 2-0. They secured the berth on August 28 against G2, taking Dust2 13-6 and Cache 13-9. On Dust2 the Esports World Cup champions turned a 0-3 start into a 6-3 lead and a 9-3 half; on Cache, Danil “donk” Kryshkovets aced through a smoke in mid and on the B site to put the Boris “magixx” Vorobiev-led team ahead 11-6, and Spirit closed it out without letting G2 force overtime.
Spirit then beat FURIA 2-0 on August 31 in the seeding match. donk finished the group stage on a 1.62 rating overall and 1.86 on the T side across six maps, racing to 17 kills in the first half of Ancient, a map Spirit had not lost since March in a run of 13 straight wins. Cache proved even more one-sided, with Andrey “tN1R” Tatarinovich leading the T side to an 8-2 lead on the back of a Tec-9 1v2 clutch and finishing the map on 97 ADR.
How the quarter-finalists got there
FURIA qualified on August 28 by beating M80 16-13 on Cache and 13-5 on Dust2. Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato was rated 1.86 on the Cache opener with 32 kills and 99.9 ADR, then won all five of his opening duels on a 2.27-rated T side on Dust2. Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo's 1v2 set up the second map early.
I just changed my crosshair. I'm definitely keeping this one for Porto.
Vitality opened the tournament with a 0-2 loss to Inner Circle in Justinas “jL” Lekavičius's first appearance as a stand-in for William “mezii” Merriman, then recovered through the lower bracket. They eliminated 9z 2-0 on August 29, conceding eight rounds across a 13-2 win on Dust2 and a 13-6 win on Nuke that placed the South American side 13th-16th. jL ended the series with 38 kills and a 1.96 rating, ahead of Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut on 1.82.
G2 came through the Group A lower bracket with wins over Aurora and NAVI. Aurora had reached that match by eliminating M80 2-0 on August 30, 13-3 on Dust2 and 13-5 on Inferno, with Özgür “woxic” Eker rated 2.28 on the first map and Ismailcan “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş hitting a Dual Berettas ace on the Inferno B site.
Legacy started the group stage on August 27 with a 2-0 win over FUT, 13-10 on Ancient and 13-11 on Dust2, Santino “try” Rigal posting 26 kills and a 1.60 rating on the opener and Bruno “latto” Rebelatto acing to close Dust2 after FUT had pulled an 8-1 deficit back to 11-11. Falcons, who lifted the Major trophy in Cologne, went through a shakier stretch in the group stage, dropping Ancient in each of their matches against Lynn Vision Gaming and then losing to MOUZ, who beat two lower-ranked opponents in their group before taking the upper-bracket final.