Spirit are the champions of the Esports World Cup 2026 after beating FUT 3-1 in the grand final, closing the series out 13-5 on Nuke. HLTV reports the scoreline across the four maps as 10-13 on Cache, 16-13 on Anubis, 16-14 on Ancient and 13-5 on Nuke.
The title is Spirit’s second of the year, after their win at PGL Astana, and caps a run that included snapping a six-match losing streak against Vitality in the quarter-finals. It also follows a period of scrutiny around Sergey “hally” Shavaev, who returned to the roster after the team showed an uptick in form with Dmitry “S0tF1k” Forostyanko standing in.
The final was the first meeting between the two sides. FUT arrived undefeated at the event, having beaten MOUZ and FURIA in the playoffs, and opened with a Cache pick that marked their debut on the map, using the Inferno permaban they shared with Spirit to remove Dust2 instead.
FUT draw first blood before Spirit turn the series
Cache went FUT’s way. They raced to a 3-0 start before a clutch from Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov and multi-kills from Myroslav “zont1x” Plakhotia put Spirit 6-3 ahead, and a 1v2 from Aulon “Krabeni” Fazlija levelled the map at the break. A second pistol win and a defensive display from Yasin “xfl0ud” Koç, who finished on 140 ADR, carried FUT to a 12-6 lead and then to the map.
Anubis followed a similar opening, with a third straight pistol win taking FUT to 4-1, before sh1ro, Danil “donk” Kryshkovets and Andrey “tN1R” Tatarinovich combined to put Spirit on map point at 11-5. Spirit could not close it, letting the lead slip to 12-12, and it took eight frags in three rounds from tN1R in overtime to regain map point at 15-12 and level the series.
Ancient was tighter still. A triple from donk on a partial buy held the map at 6-6, and multi-kills from Dmytro “dem0n” Myroshnychenko and Džiugas “dziugss” Steponavičius moved FUT to 12-9, before Boris “magixx” Vorobiev and tN1R closed the gap. dem0n fell a single bullet short of ending the map with a 1v3 clutch, and Spirit took overtime to extend FUT’s losing run on Ancient to nine straight. Nuke was one-sided by comparison: Spirit led 10-2 at half behind tN1R and zont1x, and closed it out 13-5.
donk takes his second MVP award of the year
donk was named MVP of the $2,000,000 event, his second HLTV x 1XBET MVP award of 2026. He finished with a 1.50 rating and 1.32 KPRW, did not drop below 1.00 on any map, and was named player of the map eight times, including a 1.46 rating in the quarter-final against Vitality and a 1.87 on the fourth map of the grand final.
It is his 12th career medal and his ninth at a Big Event, which draws him level with Nikola “NiKo” Kovač in fourth place on the all-time list. donk has never finished outside the top two of the year-end top 20, and HLTV frames the award as an answer to the doubts raised by Spirit’s poor elimination series at IEM Cologne and in the BLAST Bounty grand final.