G2 triumph at Red Bull Home Ground 2025: Does it mean anything?

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 17/11/2025

G2 have been crowned the champions of Red Bull Home Ground 2025, claiming the sixth edition of the event in front of a home crowd in New York.

The victory for the Americas roster came in the form of a dominant 3-0 Grand Final victory, easily defeating the VCT Champions 2025 winners, NRG.

G2 show regional dominance in tournament victory

Prior to the Grand Final, NRG looked to be in a strong position to back up their Valorant Champions 2025 victory in Paris with another victory in New York, after cleanly getting to the Grand Final without dropping a map.

Victories over Sentinels’ academy roster, Cubert Academy, followed by wins against Sentinels and Zeta Division had secured them a place at the Hammerstein Ballroom for Sunday’s concluding Best of 5.

G2 arrived at the Grand Finals through the lower bracket after losing to Zeta Division, who also defeated Fnatic. But victories over C9, Sentinels and Fnatic put them in the Lower Bracket Final against Zeta Division where G2 restored normalcy in an extremely emphatic 2-0 series victory.

That form carried over to the Grand Final, where G2 wrestled away a close Corrode before running away with Split and Pearl.

NRG’s two-pick advantage from being Upper Bracket winners bore no fruit, as G2 stole away both of NRG’s picks to claim a 3-0 victory, defeating their regional rivals once again.

Trent ‘trent’ Cairns and Alexander ‘jawgemo’ Mor proved to be huge difference-makers in the series, recording 1.35 and 1.29 ratings respectively.

The event victory came closely following the departure of Jonah ‘JonahP’ Pulice from the G2 roster, with veteran player Andrej ‘BABYBAY’ Francisty taking his place in the roster.

Does Red Bull Home Ground victory mean anything for G2?

Despite the victory, the tournament is still an offseason event first and foremost. Various teams, such as Fnatic, are still embedding new signings and figuring out their roles and positions.

Additionally, the format of the event is also highly unusual, featuring all Best of 1s until the Upper and Lower Bracket Finals.

Maximised to have as much Valorant as possible in as small a timeframe as possible, it highly contrasts to the VCT’s typically spread-out schedule.

As such, teams are not operating in their usual sense, with days to study opponents and counter their strategies.

For some teams, that is more of a hindrance than others, and NRG (alongside Fnatic) are regarded as one of the most tactically aware and considered teams in Valorant’s international scene.

G2 also benefited from playing with BABYBAY for the majority of Americas Stage 2, albeit in place of Nathan ‘leaf’ Orf, who was absent due to illness.

Overall, G2 were both acclimated with their players and the environment, as they romped to the Red Bull Home Ground victory.

The Grand Final victory, in that case, is perhaps most demonstrative of G2’s mechanical dominance over NRG, with G2’s sharpshooters proving a difficult puzzle for NRG’s leader, Ethan ‘Ethan’ Arnold, to solve.

G2 have defeated NRG on every occasion in their 2025 matches, with G2 winning 10 maps to NRG’s single map success, showing their edge over their regional opponents.

For the most part, the event taught us what we generally already knew about G2.

Firstly, that G2 are an extremely capable roster, and secondly that they are dominant in their region.

Whether this nominatively ‘international’ event is enough to prove that they can have success elsewhere remains to be seen, as the conditions of international tournaments are entirely different to this offseason event.

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.

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