Yandex roll over reigning champs Team Spirit to storm into EWC 2026 semis

Yandex came into the Esports World Cup 2026 as the most successful team of the competitive season, with four championship titles already under their belt. For Team Spirit, the season story is a bit different. They struggled and made continuous roster adjustments throughout the year in hopes of finding the chemistry before the two biggest tournaments of the year.

Second place in their group and an insanely intense battle against Team Liquid in the survival series gave Team Spirit fans a lot of hope heading into the playoffs. It’s no secret anymore that Spirit figured out how to peak at the right moment each competitive season, and that right moment usually starts with the Esports World Cup.

However, this year it seems they still have work to do for TI, as their EWC run is already over.

Team Yandex vs Team Spirit 2:0

In theory, Spirit had the perfect hard counter to what Yandex was planning for game one of the best-of-three playoff quarterfinal. The defending Champions had the last pick in the game one draft and went for Tidehunter for Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov to counter Yandex's highly mobile draft. The Aghanim's Shard upgrade, Dead in the Water, was meant to completely nullify Yandex’s Centaur Warruner’s ultimate, Mirana’s Leap and Ember Spirit’s Fire Remnant.

However, Yandex played extremely aggressively from the early laning stage, focused Collapse in their skirmishes, delayed the shard upgrade as much as possible, and made sure to suffocate Spirit on their side of the map. More so, when Spirit found the window for a second Aegis, Ilya "CHIRA_JUNIOR" Chirtsov managed to snatch it and deny any chance of Team Spirit making a comeback in the match.

The second game was more of the same story as Yandex out-tempoed Team Spirit from start to finish with a carry Clinkz to take a clean 2-0 victory and advance to the Esports World Cup semifinals.

Yandex’s adversaries for the semifinals will be determined in the PVISION vs Rune Eaters quarterfinals.