Team Yandex won the Dota 2 BLAST Slam 8 championship, beating Team Spirit 3-1 in a best-of-five grand final after losing the opening game, Esports.gg reported.
It was Yandex’s second title of the 2026-2027 season. The team had already won PGL Wallachia Season 9, and with PGL and BLAST hosting the first two major Dota 2 tournaments since The International 15, Yandex has now won both, according to the outlet.
A rematch through the lower bracket
The final was the latest meeting between the two teams at the event. Yandex lost to Spirit in the seeding matches, then beat them in the playoffs to send Spirit into the lower bracket. Spirit returned to the grand final by edging out PARIVISION in the lower-bracket final. The three-time International champions played the event without their star offlaner Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov, with Bohdan “Batyuk” Batiuk in the role.
How the series turned
Spirit carry Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk took game one on a heavily farmed Ursa. Spirit looked set to go 2-0 up in game two, but Yandex’s Ilya “CHIRA_JUNIOR” Chirtsov, who struggled for farm early, bought time for his carry and offlaner until they had the items to fight. With Spirit losing teamfights and their base overrun, Yatoro and Batyuk teleported to Yandex’s top tier-three tower to force a base race. Yandex teleported three heroes back, shut the pair down and took the game.
Game three was close on kills, but Esports.gg reported that Yandex’s gold lead left Spirit little room to turn the series. Yatoro’s Sven carried an Aegis, yet Spirit kept losing skirmishes, including ones Yandex carry Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov was not part of. The outlet credited Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf’s targeting and positioning on Doom with stopping Spirit from mounting a response. Yandex won three consecutive games to take the series 3-1.
ATF, a former Team Falcons offlaner, joined Yandex in September, and the team has won two trophies since. In his post-game interview he thanked fans for supporting him and his new team.
I will obviously win every single tournament, and hopefully, I will crush (Team) Falcon’s streak, and we will win 10 times more than that.
Esports.gg pointed to ATF’s impact alongside the mechanical play of Martin “Saksa” Sazdov and the rest of the lineup as the basis of Yandex’s run through the first two events of the season.
