Nigma Galaxy TI 2025 team profile: There are no coincidences

Six years after Kuro "KuroKy" Takhasomi left Team Liquid to form his own organisation, he has finally done it, and Nigma Galaxy will be playing at The International 2025.

“Stars aligned” is Nigma Galaxy’s motto, but back in 2019, when the team was formed, nobody thought that this would be quite so literal. A planetary parade of seven or more stars to align is extremely rare. We talk decades rare, but on the 28th of February 2025, the stars did align. The last time eight planets aligned was in 1982, and some even say that the gravitational influence created by this alignment made the Voyager missions possible.

All these have obviously nothing to do with Dota 2. Still, this year’s planetary alignment was highlighted even by Valve, who announced the International 2025 by saying, “the stars have aligned and the stage is once again being set for a cosmic battle.” In consequence, TI 2025 has the sky and the stars featured in the event theme.

In June this year, Nigma Galaxy became the 16th and last team to qualify for The International 2025. They’ve done so by besting OG 2-1 in the lower bracket finals of Western Europe regional qualifiers.

No longer a ghost of themselves

From all the teams in contention at TI 2025, Nigma’s journey to the pinnacle Dota 2 event is by far the most winding one. It took them six years and an immense number of shuffles to get here. There are a few key changes that made it all click in the end. One of them is Kuro "KuroKy" Salehi Takhasomi swapping out from the active roster to become the team’s coach. Sumail "SumaiL" Hassan and Maroun "GH" Merhej’s return to the active roster has also been crucial. However, one puzzle piece has always seemed to elude Nigma. The carry position was designated to Amer "Miracle-" Al-Barkawi, but his health problems forced Nigma to either attend the events they qualified for with a stand-in or start them with Miracle- and call in for a helping hand mid tournament. This year alone, Nigma Galaxy played 11 tournaments and qualifiers with Daniel "Ghost" Chan substituting for Miracle-.

Ghost stood in for Nigma for the first time in 2024. A year later, he is heading to TI 2025 with the team, which makes perfect sense considering that he played more official games with them this year than Miracle-, and has also been their carry in the qualifier campaign.

Nigma Galaxy roster

• Daniel "Ghost" Chan
• Sumail "SumaiL" Hassan
• Tony "No!ob" Assaf
• Omar "OmaR" Moughrabi
• Maroun "GH" Merhej
• Coach: Kuro "KuroKy" Takhasomi

While they went through all the roster troubles possible and have constantly tried to solve the issue, one thing got quite broken. Despite having hugely experienced players and true legends working together, Nigma lost the synergy. That became even more obvious when GH had to swap from position 4 to position 5 and take Kuro’s in-game leadership role.

“Swapping roles is never easy, especially when it comes to position 5,” said GH in an interview with PGL at Wallachia Season 4. “I believe I still have to step up my in-game leadership skills.”

GH is not the only player who had to make a role swap. No!ob also moved from mid lane to offlane, which came with a ton of work. To begin with, he had to expand his hero pool by a lot, and he had less than a year to adapt to everything offlane requires. But hard work pays off, and fans will finally get to see Nigma play at The International.

Seizing the moment

A month before TI 2025, Nigma played at Clavision Masters 2025: Snow-Ruyi, the last LAN tournament before the pinnacle event of the year and surprised everyone by taking first place in their group. They’ve done that by taking down some of the favourites at the Aegis this year. They took a clean 2-0 over Tundra Esports and bested PARIVISION and Xtreme Gaming 2-1. However, they played against Tundra and Xtreme again in the playoffs, and both teams exacted their revenge. Heading into TI, if Nigma manages to keep up with the tournament meta and prepare enough strategies that they don’t become too predictable, then we might see Kuro and co living the dream again and step onto the Barclays Arena stage for the playoffs.

After all, a planetary parade of this year’s magnitude won’t happen again until 2040, so Nigma Galaxy must make the most out of this year’s event.

More TI 2025 team profiles

• Xtreme Gaming: Friends in need are friends indeed
• HEROIC: Consistently unpredictable
• NAVI: The rite of passage
• Nemesis: Filipino passion meets TI pressure
• Aurora: Eclipsed by titans
• Wildcard: Swing for the fences