StarLadder Budapest Major wrap-up: Where are playoff teams left after Vitality triumph?
Vitality’s StarLadder Budapest Major victory provided the ultimate proof of their superiority in what has been an era-defining 2025 for the roster.
Yet, every tournament victory is built on a pyramid of ever more desolate failure, and the Budapest Major was no exception.
Vitality left with their second Major of the year, and 31 teams left defeated and vanquished.
The bitter taste of failure is no more painful than for those who reached the playoffs, who walked past the trophy, but who could not touch it.
Esports News UK looks at the defeated seven teams of the StarLadder Budapest Major playoffs to review what needs to change to alter that bitter taste of defeat to the sweet taste of victory in 2026.
FaZe Clan miracle run papers over significant cracks
FaZe’s miracle run in Budapest provided the greatest entertainment and storyline of the Major. From 0.437 seconds away from Stage 1 elimination, the roster eventually left two maps short of tournament victory.
There is no doubt that FaZe made significant strides throughout the tournament, playing better in every stage.
When ENUK spoke to IGL Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen at BLAST London, the Dane reflected on their struggles earlier in the year, stating:
“The most important thing was that we didn’t have a strong mentality. That comes from not believing in our system, believing in ourselves, believing in the way we play. How can you believe in the comeback if it’s a system that has cracks, right?”
Certainly, FaZe believed in the comeback always in Budapest, something which was best reflected by their Nuke recovery against Natus Vincere as the roster rallied in the semi-final.
The roster is clearly mentally in a better position than in the first half of the year, and with the combo of David ‘frozen’ Čerňanský and Russel ‘Twistzz’ van Dulken, they have two of the best riflers in the world to win them rounds.
Jakub ‘jcobbb’ Pietruszewski also had his first true great moments for FaZe, hopefully giving him a basis for future confidence in Tier 1.
Yet, FaZe’s Grand Final defeat showed their true level for now.
FaZe had to win Nuke and Inferno; they had absolutely no chance on Dust 2 and Overpass. Overpass, especially, had been a disastrous sore spot for the roster even before the Grand Final shellacking, with jcobbb and Twistzz unable to even trade each other on the B site.
In a sense, FaZe were actually lucky as Vitality’s permaban is Ancient. The map was totally exposed against NaVi in the first map of the semi-final, who demolished FaZe 13-5 on the map.
Put simply, of the seven maps in the map pool, FaZe can only play three to a high standard, making them easy prey for the more developed Vitality roster.
karrigan had previously told HLTV that he was targeting 2026. In terms of the map pool, one would hope that it would naturally develop with time, but it’s by no means a given, as different maps expose different aspects or frailties of players.
In the most optimistic interpretation, a Best of 5 Grand Final in 2025 was too early for FaZe.
NaVi must avoid falling into the trap of complacency
NaVi’s Budapest run, at times, threatened to become another PGL Copenhagen 2024; an Andrii ‘B1ad3’ Horodenskyi masterclass that leads this underdog roster to glory.
It was not only NaVi’s tactical adeptness that was reminiscent of 2024, but also their positive attitudes, and the sudden, unexpected individual levels of the players.
The most significant difference in NaVi’s 2025 vs their 2024 was that in 2024, there was a revolving door of players stepping up when the moment needed them.
In one map, it would be Justinas ‘jL’ Lekavičius, in another it would be Valerii ‘b1t’ Vakhovskyi, and so on.
Despite individually not being comparable to other rosters, they always had someone popping off to overcome that deficit.
In 2025, it really hadn’t happened at all until the Budapest Major.
Suddenly, Ihor ‘w0nderful’ Zhdanov was a superstar AWPer, and Drin ‘makazze’ Shaqiri showed a strong understanding of timings to pair with his natural aim.
Despite a disappointing ending, NaVi still looked leagues better than how they had looked at any other time in 2025, even comparing them to their semi-final run at IEM Cologne.
Yet, I think the most dangerous instinct for Natus Vincere as an organisation will be to look at Budapest and believe that they build from it.
NaVi have looked like they need changes all year; the roster has suffered again and again from a lack of firepower, which breaks down their ability to apply a system successfully.
Despite being a high-water mark, their defeat at Budapest at the hands of frozen and Twistzz exemplified the difference-makers that NaVi are missing.
YnK described NaVi’s composition to Esports News UK in interview, stating, “Even last year, they’re a team that overperformed, really. When you look at the composition of the roster, you would not have expected them to have the success that they did. But they played like more than the sum of their powers.”
They somehow mustered that in Budapest, but in this more competitive year, it was still not enough.
Budapest made those decisions even harder for NaVi as their individuals did deliver at times, but in order to win again, they must be ruthless.
Mouz cannot let T-sides slide
Mouz’s defeat at the hands of FaZe was frankly nightmarish. It felt like the roster had lost all the progress that it had made in the last few years, as the previously labelled ‘FaZe Academy’ crumbled again under the bright lights.
That is not entirely fair, as nothing can truly erase that experience, but the fact that FaZe can go from looking so bad to beating Mouz again proves that Mouz are plateauing.
Admittedly, it is quite a high plateau, which is not something to deride, but mentally it is hard to accept losing in a similar way once again.
Mouz’s T-sides are statistically abject. The roster’s reserved and careful nature makes them a strong CT-sided team, keeping them amongst the world’s elite, but they frequently lack agency on the T-side.
Essentially, Mouz’s gameplan revolves too heavily around the opening success of Dorian ‘xertioN’ Berman, who once again had a slow start against FaZe.
Once xertioN struggles, Mouz have no space and cannot midround their way out of those holes.
One potential issue with Mouz is their IGL’s lack of emotional leadership. Looking at the big screen in the arena, I can comfortably say that Ludvig ‘Brollan’ Brolin was not as vocal an element as players like Ádám ‘torzsi’ Torzsás.
Mouz coach, Dennis ‘sycrone’ Nielsen, told Esports News UK, “There’s a lot of development with Ludvig’s [Brollan’s] weaknesses on a leadership side, on an emotional side, but also a lot of strengths in terms of the technical side.”
But when it comes to CS2, which is such a momentum game, I wonder whether Mouz are missing an emotional leader, someone to join torzsi in rallying the troops when times get tough.
At the very least, Brollan’s ‘technical side’ is not leading to technically proficient T-sides.
Spirit moves underline the need to keep donk happy
Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets cut a devastated figure following defeat against Vitality on Mirage, never truly recovering the series after that moment.
The prodigy had dropped 34 kills in the contest, a 1.54 HLTV rating, only to end up on the losing side.
The tension between the young superstar and his teammates was palpable following the loss, which was compounded by an uncompetitive Dust 2 defeat.
That tension has ultimately resulted in Leonid ‘chopper’ Vishnyakov and Ivan ‘zweih’ Gogin being benched, with Boris ‘magixx’ Vorobiev and Myroslav ‘zont1x’ Plakhotia returning to the roster.
We can fairly say that Spirit’s firepower experiment has been a failure. Moves designed to give donk a supportive cast on the server left him more isolated than ever.
Spirit’s swift action, especially in the reintegration of magixx, seems almost designed to keep their generational rifler happy.
donk’s typically emotionless facade was broken several times by magixx’s happy-go-lucky personality – a personality that could recover donk’s mental struggles in games.
Spirit’s T-sides have also been awful. Completely monofaceted, far too dependent on donk still even with the additions of Andrey ‘tN1R’ Tatarinovich and zweih.
While chopper has had a great run at Spirit and developed an incredible amount of young talent, I think it’s fair to say his race was run.
He did not have the solutions necessary in-game, and his own fragging ability was a true liability at times.
In magixx, we don’t really know what we’re going to get, but frankly, Spirit’s T-sides can scarcely get worse.
On the CT-side, the roles now make much more sense, with tN1R presumably being allowed all his star roles.
Whether this is the long-term solution to Spirit’s IGLing issue, I’m not so sure, but at the very least, it should keep donk on side, which will be the priority for the organisation.
Furia’s clock is ticking
Furia and Falcons can similarly look back to slow starts in their quarter-finals with regret. Individually, their players were not there from the get-go, which is a death-sentence in MR12.
Furia, as pre-tournament favourites, drew severe criticism for their loss to NaVi, but in my estimation, the loss was not a severe cause for concern.
After an exhilarating debut year, Danil ‘molodoy’ Golubenko earned a rough series or two.
It’s difficult to remember that the AWPer is still a rookie as he has taken to Tier 1 CS with little difficulty, but against NaVi those high-pressure shots went awry.
The Kazakh has produced magic in the arena, but Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovač will tell you that Major pressure is a different beast.
Furia’s worry will not be so much not winning the tournament, but that Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo’s window of IGLing may be closing.
Ninjas in Pyjamas legend, Christopher ‘GeT_RiGhT’ Alesund, told ENUK, “I’ve talked to FalleN, actually, a few times about it, and I’m to some degree kind of surprised he still plays because, from what he told me, it feels like he doesn’t want to play.”
If FalleN is to step down next year, that leaves Furia only two Majors to replicate their outstanding level at BLAST Rivals or IEM Chengdu in a Major Playoff.
After winning four out of their five events prior to the Major, of course, you want to strike while the iron is hot.
However, for as long as FalleN is leading, I believe this Furia team will have the mental strength to recover from this loss and compete again in 2026.
Falcons must fix their inconsistency
Despite an overtime loss on Map 2, it honestly felt like Falcons were eliminated from Budapest in an instant.
Map 1 of Nuke raced by with little fanfare. NiKo, Damjan ‘kyxsan’ Stoilkovski, and René ‘TeSeS’ Madsen were bullied off the server, with only Maxim ‘kyousuke’ Lukin and Ilya ‘m0NESY’ Osipov putting up any level of resistance.
It seemed Dust 2 was in their grasp, but zweih stepped up to deny them.
The perplexing thing about Falcons is how often they look like they don’t have the level of starpower that they do. That comes down to a latent inconsistency in activating the stars in the roster.
Some days, that starpower is there and they look near unstoppable; sometimes it’s completely absent. In Budapest, against Spirit, they looked like nothing special.
Danny ‘zonic’ Sørensen should be under-pressure in that sense. The five-times Major-winning coach is ultimately responsible for how the team enter the server, and the plans to get the team’s momentum going on the server.
Nevertheless, the team’s average placement is 3rd/4th. There’s no reason to panic.
While rumours swirl of a star-anchor signing, the roster may benefit from that, but what will truly decide Falcons’ fate is whether m0NESY, kyousuke, and NiKo can look like themselves every single day.
The MongolZ may have peaked
For The MongolZ, a playoff berth was certainly a positive result behind the unexpectedly comfortable performances of Unudelger ‘controlez’ Baasanjargal.
The 28-year-old’s lack of Tier 1 experience only truly showed on the stage, ultimately an understandable failing.
The roster showed their continued excellence in making it through Stage 3 of the Major, defeating a strong G2 team to do so.
The MongolZ still maintain a distinct identity in the absence of Azbayar ‘Senzu’ Munkhbold, but I think the Austin Major Grand Final will forever be its peak without him.
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