Storylines to look out for at BLAST Open London

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 26/08/2025

Tier 1 Counter-Strike is returning to London’s OVO Arena Wembley, with six teams qualifying for the arena event taking place from September 5-7 out of 16 teams participating in the online portion of the event, starting August 26

Esports News UK looks at the potential storylines and implications of the Counter-Strike event as CS prepares for the StarLadder Budapest 2025 Major in December.

Vitality’s era in question

Following The MongolZ’s victory at the Esports World Cup, the Counter-Strike world suddenly seems to be a different landscape. Vitality’s era is now truly in question following two defeats to The MongolZ, as well as losses to Mouz and Falcons at IEM Cologne and EWC, respectively.

While there is no doubting the roster’s dominance in the first half of the year, Vitality have returned back to earth from the Counter-Strike heavens they were inhabiting from January to June. Vitality IGL, Dan ‘apEX’ Madesclaire took to social media after the EWC defeats to state, “We’re in a horrible slump right now” in a series of messages to fans in which the Frenchman reacted to some fan backlash precipitating from the slump, stating, “It’s easy to support when you win 7 tournaments in a row. You’re all acting smart on Twitter, talking about Vitality as if it were you.“

While are still the team of 2025, losing twice in a row to The MongolZ does reflect that the roster’s competitive advantage over their rivals has diminished. In truth, Vitality rarely had “rivals” in the first half of the year, with Mouz and Falcons at times pushing the roster to the brink, but while Vitality bent, they never broke.

Now that the roster has tasted defeat, their test will be to regain that form, starting in London. If the roster still wants those goals of emulating Astralis in winning 10 events in a calendar year or winning two majors in the same year, they will have to do so.

Like Astralis before them, Vitality will have been the most studied roster coming out of the first season, with every little aspect of their game under scrutiny. To innovate and to refresh will be the name of the game, but also to maintain strong communication when things go wrong. As they say, ‘everyone is happy when they’re winning.’

Now they are not, Vitality’s roster faces a real test of character.

Spirit, champions of Cologne and BLAST Bounty Season 2 are expected to field Andrey ‘tN1r’ Tatarinovich for the first time as the org aims to bolster the supporting cast to Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets who lifted the BLAST Spring Finals trophy last year in London.

With the roster seemingly already benefiting from new signing Ivan ‘zweih’ Gogin, the fortified roster are one of the favourites for the event with Esports Betting Sites. Victory at the event, despite their abject showing at EWC, could begin conversations about the Russian roster claiming world number 1 from Vitality in earnest.

Mouz, on the other hand, have not won an event in 2025 where Vitality were present. Though they have now defeated Vitality at IEM Cologne, the subsequent defeat to Spirit soured the party, leaving Mouz with that familiar feeling of being almost, but not quite, there. Could BLAST Open London be the young roster’s catalyst for future success?

Liquid’s chance at redemption

Unfortunately, The MongolZ will not be attending the event due to Visa issues. Instead, Liquid replaced The MongolZ despite being eliminated from the qualifier for the event by VP Prodigy, Virtus.pro’s academy roster.

The event will be a vital opportunity as Liquid look to save their season and qualify for the StarLadder Budapest 2025 Major by securing top 16 in the EU VRS on the invite date, October 6. To make substantive progress in the VRS, Liquid simply must make the 6-team playoff, as there is a substantial disparity between LAN results and online results in terms of VRS value.

Additionally, the Prize Pool attached to the LAN event gives teams chances to earn Bounty Offered – one of VRS’s valued measures. EPIC.LAN admin, and UK CS community member, Finn ‘Mischief’ Farrer simulated 30,000,000 matches to map out a picture of the VRS standings coming up to the deadline, giving Liquid a 48.2% chance of qualifying for the major. Their major hopes hang in the balance, explaining why they signed up to the Birch Cup, a local Polish LAN in Gdańsk with a $15,000 prize pool.

There have been some positive signs for Liquid. At BLAST Bounty Season 2, Liquid defeated Furia online before falling to Vitality in two close maps; at EWC they once again pushed Vitality’s roster in a 13-11, 19-16 defeat.

Yet there has been no singular run for Liquid that can be pointed to as an example of how they will succeed at BLAST Open London. The roster’s best results came in a 5th-6th place finish at IEM Melbourne, and 5th-8th finishes at ESL Pro League and BLAST Bounty Season 2 – results which are months apart from each other.

Liquid’s signing of NaVi analyst, Viktor ‘flashie’ Tamás Bea, as their new coach in July was viewed by many as a studious move for the organisation. At IEM Cologne, flashie was quoted by Pley.gg as saying the roster had “a lack of fundamentals.” BLAST Open London is where Liquid must show the new fundamentals flashie aims to instil, where a coherent style of play must emerge, and where Liquid must establish a foundation not only for their playstyle, but for their season as a whole, as the roster aims to get to Budapest.

Liquid at least have respite from Vitality, after playing them twice back-to-back, but they face a tricky G2 roster packed with rifling firepower. Their silver lining will be that they now face an under-pressure AWPer in Álvaro ‘SunPayus’ García rather than Vitality’s maestro, Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut.

Major hopefuls and outsiders

Ecstatic and fnatic go into BLAST London with outside chances at making the major, yet the event’s importance is such that success at BLAST London can give them a pathway to the Budapest. The two rosters have contrasting pathways to similar VRS rankings, with Ecstatic focusing on LAN events and fnatic on the classic online grind for the most part. Yet their diverging paths have led them to the same place at BLAST Open London.

Success at the event could be transformative for both in terms of increasing their slim chances of attending the major, but neither are likely to succeed. They start against NaVi and FaZe, respectively.

Perhaps most importantly for UK fans, fnatic’s qualification to the LAN would mean seeing Cai ‘CYPHER’ Watson on the big stage again. The BLAST Paris Major quarter-finalist British entry ace was signed by fnatic in July, briefly before Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev’s arrival, but fnatic are yet to see his kinetic and violent best as an entry fragger. Perhaps the appeal of the home crowd can spur the Brit on.

For the rest of the pack, the event could have major implications, pun intended. The teams will be vying to start the major at the latest stage possible, meaning teams like NaVi, who have recently fallen out of the top 5 in HLTV’s VRS projection, will need wins to start at Stage 3.

M80, GamerLegion, Virtus.pro, FaZe, Imperial, G2, Furia and Legacy all stand to realistically benefit in the same sense – success in London could mean skipping stages of the major and giving them a firmer footing in the respective regions.

That is not to mention the new addition of Jakub ‘jcobbb’ Pietruszewski, the pressure GamerLegion AWPer Jeremy ‘Kursy’ Gast is under to adjust to Tier 1 Counter-Strike, the development of Nemanja ‘huNter-‘ Kovač as G2’s IGL or thousands of other potential storylines at BLAST.

For Esports News UK, the exciting question will be which six teams qualify for the arena and play in front of the British crowd at the OVO Arena Wembley… and we’ll see you there.

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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