Aurora Gaming TI 2025 team profile: Eclipsed by titans
A year of transformation for Aurora Gaming promises some sort of success at The International 2025, but things are never that easy.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, or if you tune in only for the pinnacle event of the year, you might need to know that Aurora Gaming is now an Eastern European team. They transitioned from Southeast Asia to EEU at the end of February this year, and managed to bring together some of the best players the region has to offer.
Aurora’s roster was built by Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko, who chose only the players with whom he wanted to play. “If any of these players had rejected the offer, I wouldn’t be here, most probably,” Nightfall said back in March in an interview with PGL at Aurora’s LAN debut in the new formula. The team features names with a shared history. They also have two TI winners, with both former Team Spirit players, Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek and Myroslav "Mira" Kolpakov joining in. More so, Mira is a double TI winner with Spirit, looking now for a three-peat.
Aurora Gaming roster
- Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko
- Gleb "kiyotaka" Zyryanov
- Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek
- Myroslav "Mira" Kolpakov
- Nikita "panto" Balaganin
- coach: Sergei "G" Bragin
On paper, Aurora is a very good team, but one of their problems is that the scene is quite stacked with a lot of very talented rosters. They played through the Eastern European region, which this year proved to be the strongest by far. Team Spirit, PARIVISION and BetBoom Team have been a step ahead of Aurora all the time, forcing them to play regional qualifiers for some of the biggest events.
The fierce competition in EEU compelled Aurora to play at their full potential all of the time, and they became so dominant in regional battles that when the TI regional qualifiers came, many of the other teams fled the region, preferring to play against the likes of OG, Secret or Nigma in the Western Europe qualifiers.
However, regional success did not translate on international LANs. Aurora’s season is full of top 6 placements, with the best result being a top 4 at DreamLeague Season 26. Through the entire season, they faced an unbreakable wall when pitted against Team Spirit, who hold a 7-0 record against them. PARIVISION also got their number, heading into TI 2025 with a 7-2 record over Aurora. These are also the two most dominant teams of the season and also the ones responsible for many of Aurora’s exits in the top 6 at various tournaments.
Aurora’s struggles also come from becoming a bit too predictable inside and outside the game.
Inside the game, they tend to fixate on some heroes with not that much flex potential. Their most played hero this season is Tiny, which went either to Nightfall in the safe lane or to Kiyotaka in the mid lane. Another flex hero utilised often is Abaddon, which was played by either Nightfall or Torontotokyo.
Aurora Gaming’s most successful heroes in 20+ games
Most recently, at the last two tournaments, they’ve been spamming Dawnbreaker combined with another powerful healing hero, be it Pugna, Abaddon or Marci. Healing combos were some of their favourites in the recent contests, but that is also what made them predictable.
Outside the game, Aurora players struggle to stay positive after a loss. They lack someone to deliver motivational speeches. All hopes are that the EEU veteran G, who is now their coach, will be able to calm them down when needed and keep their spirits up through tough times, while also working on developing their strategies.
TI 2025 forecast: Top 4
An early exit seems out of the question for Aurora, even if they are to lose again to Spirit and PARIVISION in the group stage. Only the bottom three teams in the Swiss group format will be eliminated on the Road to The International, which means Aurora will get enough chances to recover from one or two potential losses. Assuming that neither Spirit nor PARIVISION will be in the elimination rounds, Aurora should be able to make the cut to the playoffs, and that’s where they will have to conquer their own demons first before battling their adversaries.
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