BIG defeated Sashi 2-1 to become the second team to qualify for the Esports World Cup from the open qualifiers.
The second map in this series was the only map they dropped in the entire tournament, and with a red-hot, Super Saiyan-like gr1ks, they proved they were worthy of the No. 2 seed.
This Belarusian sniper is a top rising star, named best player on 6 of the 11 maps played and finishing this qualifier with an incredible 1.58 Rating.
This Danish Sashi squad has been steadily climbing the VRS rankings lately, picking up four valuable series wins in Paris, including knocking out Virtus.pro. Combined with their earlier title at CCT 2026 Europe Series 5, they are now firmly inside the VRS top 50.
However, BIG proved to be too strong an opponent, defeating HUNDEN's team on both Cache and Ancient. This left blameF quite pleased, as he was unhappy with Sashi's trash talk and fired back in person: "You play like shit, what are you yapping about?"
On the other side, K27 and fnatic played out a closely contested match and ultimately secured qualification for the main event.
Both teams have new additions, K27 brought in clax, while fnatic added mazay and cairne, with both sides looking to improve their rankings in the VRS top 40.
But fnatic's core players underperformed throughout the series, all with Ratings below 1.00, and their new signing's efforts were not enough to help the team through.
Although a 1v3 from mazay put fnatic on match point on the second map, they then threw away a 5v3 round while leading 12-11, eventually losing the map 13-16 in overtime and falling behind 4-10 on the third map.
K27 raced to a 10-4 lead, spearheaded by rising stars xeedo and qw1nk1, ranked 4th and 6th, who both posted 90 ADR on the decider map to help K27 secure their second-ever Major appearance.
At PGL Astana, inexperience cost these young Russians dearly (playing with fame as a stand-in didn't help either), but they will surely have learned from their last-place finish and can now look to pull off some upsets in this 32-team main event.