FaZe and Falcons breeze through as Spirit and Aurora survive - EWC 2026

It was quite a simple day for all the big favourites at EWC as they swept away their opponents in two.

Astralis put up a fight against Falcons and even pushed them to a 24th round on Dust 2, but ultimately NiKo was just never going to lose this game.

He was in one of those moods. He dropped 22 on Ancient in just 20 rounds, and was almost as important on Dust 2 as Falcons continue their winning streak. The org place a lot of emphasis on this event, and they seem to be taking it very seriously. karrigan has not always been super motivated for non-Cologne/Kato/Major events at times, but he seems like he's locked-in here.

FaZe were largely untested by Legacy - who continue to baffle and amaze in equal measures - which has us very excited for this new-age FaZe team.

jcobbb continues to look like a man reborn, as he went off on Cache with some fantastic aggression, and JBOEN we're all-in on. That said, Mirage was the Magician's show, as the Fantastic Mr van Dulken put the hurt on Legacy with 24 kills. We haven't even seen FaZe with frozen firing on all cylinders yet, either. This team could be the real deal as long as jcobbb doesn't wilt under pressure.

Spirit looked reassuringly dominant on map one against Luminosity, but once more were sloppy on the second as LG forced them to double overtime before donk could finally drag Spirit over the line.

Something isn't quite right with this team, and it's requiring an even more superhuman effort from donk than previously thought possible. sh1ro had one of the worst rounds you'll ever see from a professional player on Dust 2 as well, missing what felt like 10 shots in a row from the A site as players streamed in from short. It was like watching m0E from pit.

If you know, you know.

At least they won, and stayed alive, as did Aurora. M80 won some important clutches in this one, but in general play Aurora looked the level above we wanted them too, and XANTARES looked like the best player in the server, as he should with what he is given by the team. Two 13-9s make it look a little closer than it was in terms of the levels.

JiJieHao followed up a win over Spirit by crashing back to Earth, as GamerLegion quite easily dispatched of them. We'll say no more about Spirit's loss to them, we think this speaks for itself.

Finally, G2 took down BIG in the only three-mapper of the day. Despite this, it also saw the most one-sided map of the day, and another that was pretty one-sided as well. G2 destroyed BIG 13-1 on the deciding map and 13-5 on the opener, with BIG winning an OT game sandwiched between them.

NertZ had a fantastic day at the office, which is great to see for anyone who wants to see G2 do well (which includes us - they're a joy to watch) as he has been the missing piece of the puzzle as it were. He has struggled at times since joining, but today he was lights out all day.