Budapest Major Playoffs Preview: Who will come out on top of ‘Most stacked Major playoffs ever?’
The playoffs for the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 have been set with Counter-Strike’s biggest trophy at stake in Hungary.
The strength of the playoff bracket has been lauded by many fans as one of the most stacked playoff brackets in Counter-Strike history, with only FaZe in place of Aurora in recreating the VRS top eight.
Esports News UK looks forward to the December 11 + 12 quarter-finals, as the dust settles after revealing Stage 3.
donk to face Falcons test
Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets has shown his best at Budapest thus far, being individually every bit as dominant has in his rookie year, which saw him transform what was possible in Counter-Strike.
donk’s debut year saw the Russian climb to the top of every statistical table, capture IEM Katowice and the Perfect World Shanghai Major.
While the Tier 1 scene was desperately trying to come up with a solution for donk’s unstoppable impact, one veteran seemed to have cracked the code on how to limit the Russian prodigy.
Specifically, donk’s matchups against Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovač proved to be a significant headache for the young entry, with NiKo claiming an exceedingly rare positive head-to-head record against donk in 2024.
donk is currently averaging a 1.73 HLTV-rating at the StarLadder Budapest Major, a record which puts him roughly in line with his historic IEM Katowice 2024 performance.
Like in 2024, it might be up to NiKo to contain the little monster, to allow Falcons to gain supremacy elsewhere.
Spirit breezed through the Swiss stage with a 3-0 record, whereas Falcons were on the verge of elimination after losing their own map-pick of Ancient against G2.
The talented roster recovered strongly on Inferno and Dust 2 to make playoffs, with the prevailing feeling being one more of relief than joy.
Playoffs were an absolute minimum for the expensively assembled roster, but now that they are where they want to be, back on equal footing with the top teams, they must deliver.
If you remove the context of the rest of the Major, Falcons would be significant favourites for the contest, with Falcons consistently going deep in the playoffs, and Spirit failing to challenge since IEM Cologne and BLAST Bounty in July and August.
Ilya ‘m0NESY’ Osipov has also shown great form, indicating that Falcons’ win condition may be online.
With Spirit’s roster struggles in 2025, the record has widened with Falcons taking all three contests between the two in 2025, most recently at BLAST Hong Kong.
Yet when watching donk at this Major, one cannot help but feel it will take a special performance from Falcons to stop the Russian, and a special showing of experience from NiKo, especially.
Such a performance would be a fitting springboard to what may be NiKo’s first Counter-Strike major, or will donk swiftly shoot the Falcons out of the air?
Vitality must rediscover championship form against The MongolZ
Vitality won the BLAST.tv Austin Major against The MongolZ, in what represented the height of Vitality’s season one dominance in 2025.
Only one trophy in the second half of the year, with plenty of near-misses, has removed Vitality’s sense of invisibility.
That sense certainly hasn’t re-emerged thus far in Budapest, with a Bo1 loss against FaZe starting their campaign.
While Vitality also lost a Bo1 in Austin, there seems to be more of a hangover in Vitality from the whiplash of this season versus the last.
Their qualifying 2-0 victory against NaVi came in two 13-11 victories, both captured in scrappy fashion with forcebuys deciding Inferno and Train.
Those messy wins weren’t indicative of Vitality at their composed best.
That may seem harsh, but the standards that Vitality set are still in recent memory, and those may be the standards necessary to win such a strong bracket.
Vitality will be hoping that a nostalgic clash against The MongolZ may evoke that Austin run, and help them recapture those heights as they aim to progress through the bracket.
Victories against Liquid, FaZe, and G2 gave The MongolZ a playoff berth. The MongolZ’s ability to tank the loss of Azbayar ‘Senzu’ Munkhbold and look at a similar level is extraordinary.
Senzu stepped away from The MongolZ as their best performer, and somehow Unudelger ‘controlez’ Baasanjargal has filled the gap completely, averaging a 1.23-rating thus far.
Despite the stand-in nature of controlez, it seems The MongolZ will be just as big a test as they were last season, where they forced Vitality to three maps in the Austin Grand Final.
Mouz’s hometown hero looks to stifle FaZe’s recovery run
Hungary’s prodigal son, Ádám ‘torzsi’ Torzsás, will be the beneficiary of the Budapest crowd in Friday’s opener against FaZe Clan.
FaZe were 0.437 seconds from Stage 1 elimination against Red Canids, but have reached the playoffs once again.
The arena stage is traditionally where FaZe do their best work, and certainly, the roster has improved over the course of the event from what was at times a farcical showing in Stage 1 to defeating Passion UA to make playoffs.
FaZe conjured their magic to get to playoffs, taking a victory against Vitality in the Best of 1s in the process, but is there a pathway to go further?
Mouz have, at times, suffered on the stage from a lack of decisiveness, something which FaZe’s IGL, Finn ‘karrigan’ Andersen, definitely does not suffer from.
FaZe fans will point to Jakub ‘jcobbb’ Pietruszewski’s significant Stage 3 improvement as a reason why they can take another step, but even FaZe themselves have stated goals of targeting 2026 rather than this event.
Yet, realistically, if both teams play as they have been playing, then Mouz should be able to conjure their superiority in what is the biggest ranking discrepancy in the playoffs.
For all of Mouz’s faults, their ability to make semi-finals is not in question.
If Mouz can progress, a likely matchup against Furia awaits, with Mouz being the last roster to upset the Brazilian number 1 team.
In that sense, there’s no matchup that Mouz cannot win, it’s just beating two or three of these teams in one bracket that has left Mouz wanting.
Could torzsi’s hometown buff be enough to make this Mouz’s moment?
Imperious Furia set the standard
The winners of four of their last five events, in a run that has seen them win Fissure Playground 2, the Thunderpick World Championship, IEM Chengdu, and BLAST Rivals Hong Kong, Furia looked like the team to beat going into the Major.
However, with the Major being highly pressurised, you’re never quite sure how teams will look until you see them in the server.
Considering NaVi’s strong showing throughout Stage 2 of the Major, the match was viewed as something of a banana peel for the IEM Chengdu champions.
Yet from the moment the action started, there was little doubt that Furia were in championship form.
The Brazilians blew NaVi apart in a 12-0 CT-side of Nuke, with NaVi managing only two rounds to save face in the Bo1 contest.
A second Bo1 victory against Imperial, and a convincing 2-0 win over G2 have Furia a spotless record, the only roster to not drop a map so far at the Major.
Furia will start their playoff hopes against the NaVi roster that they blew away both tactically and individually. Danil ‘molodoy’ Golubenko especially looked typically sharp against NaVi, recording a 19/6/2 record.
While NaVi’s Ihor ‘w0nderful’ Zhdanov showed fantastic form to pull NaVi into the playoffs, there is little feeling that they can equalise the scales so soon after being dismantled as players or as teams.
Andrii ‘B1ad3’ Horodenskyi will be working overtime to come up with solutions, but map-pool-wise, there isn’t really anywhere NaVi can take Furia that is uncomfortable for the Brazilians.
If Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo is to be denied his third Counter-Strike Major, and his first since 2016, it will probably not be at the quarter-final stage.
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