StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 opening matches announced

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 06/11/2025

The StarLadder Budapest Major has announced the opening matchups in Stage 1 of Counter-Strike’s second major of the year.

Stage 1 will begin on November 24, with notable names including former major-winning organisations, FaZe, NiP, and Fnatic.

StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 Stage 1 matchups

• Legacy vs FlyQuest
• Fnatic vs Red Canids
• FaZe Clan vs Lynn Vision
• Parivision vs The Huns
• B8 vs M80
• Ninjas in Pyjamas vs NRG
• GamerLegion vs Fluxo
• Imperial vs Rare Atom

Stage 1 features the teams in the lower bands of each region, meaning the lower-ranked teams in the VRS that have made the major.

Team Liquid’s strong Playground Fissure #2 run, in Liquid’s last tournament before Russel ‘Twistzz’ Van Dulken returned to FaZe, ironically meant FaZe fell within the lower six EU teams to qualify to the major at the VRS date.

As such, if FaZe want to make their third major Grand Final in four attempts, they will have to fight from the very base of the tournament through the three Swiss Stages and to the MVM Dome, where the playoffs will be contested.

They face a tough opening matchup against Lynn Vision, who themselves had gone all the way from Stage 1 to Stage 3, in a memorable run at the BLAST.tv Austin Major.

Elsewhere, Fnatic and NiP will begin their campaigns against South and North American opposition, respectively. NiP comfortably made the major after missing out on Austin following their roster rebuild, but have shown poor form of late.

Fnatic are still in the early days of playing with Mykyta ‘jackasmo’ Skyba, after controversially benching Britain’s Cai ‘CYPHER’ Watson after Fnatic earned their spot at the major.

Legacy also start in Stage 1, despite winning the CS Asia Championship, and finishing runners-up of PGL Masters Bucharest.

The Brazilian roster would have started in Stage 3 if the invite date were today, but their form came too late for VRS’s October 6th invite cutoff.

The South American roster is in incredible form. If they can sustain their momentum through all three Swiss Stages, in what will have to be a marathon run, they may be a dark horse for the playoffs.

Stage 1 will start November 24, with Stages 1-3 featuring a live audience in Budapest’s MTK Sportpark, which has a 2,000 capacity for the action.

Stages 1-3 are all Swiss Brackets, featuring initial Best of 1s, followed by Bo3s for promotion/elimination matches.

Eight teams from Stage 1 will advance to Stage 2, and so on until the eight-team playoff bracket takes place on December 11-14 in the 20,000-capacity MVM Dome.

The StarLadder Budapest Major will be the first Counter-Strike major to feature a Best of 5 Grand Final.

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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