Belgium and Germany advance via the ENC EU West LoL event

Craig Robinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 22/06/2026

For a moment, there was real hope that Team GB could advance from the EUW LoL qualifier for the ENC, with the removal of bigger nations like Spain, France, and Denmark reducing the pool of top-tier EUW nations ahead of the event. However, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands still fielded strong rosters with considerable experience in recent years, and ended up battling between them for the play-in stage.

Team GB started off strong, smashing Austria, before dropping to the lower bracket after a Bo1 series against Italy. They won their lower bracket match versus Iceland, before suffering elimination at the hands of the Swiss team. Switzerland was then eliminated by Belgium, which made the lower-bracket sweep to reach the grand finals, beating the Netherlands, which found itself in the lower-bracket final after losing to Germany.

Belgium and Germany are both strong teams who missed out on direct qualification due to their big name players being away for a short period of time. Belgium has names like Raphaël “Targamas” Crabbé, Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer and Finn “Bwipo” Wiestål, with all of them making deep runs regionally and internationally. Nisqy is also a known name, having recently played support in the LEC on Vitality over a year ago. Meanwhile, Germany has names like Joel “Irrelevant” Scharoll, who was hailed as a strong top laner in his SK era, alongside other known regional talents like Timo “Tockimo” Bock on G2 Nord, and the bot lane is also represented by Eintracht Spandau and Team Orange Gaming.

Ultimately, the strength of these rosters shone through and were too much for the relative minnows in the GB roster to handle. The Netherlands narrowly missed out, with former pro jungler Mark “Markoon” van Woensel and Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten on the roster. The Dutch roster somewhat mirrors Team GB, with well-known national players still representing their country despite not competing in the upper echelons of competition for several years now.

Craig Robinson, Senior Editor

Craig began his career with Esports News UK back in 2015/2016, looking to write about a passion while studying at Manchester Metropolitan University. He stayed there for several years before moving on to other websites to begin his career after graduating. Now he's back, covering esports adjacent topics and UK stories.

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