The CS2 Esports World Cup 2025 brought us some big surprises. The tournament win of The MongolZ is not one of them. The team has had a wonderful competitive year, and this success feels like a logical step.
The Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) tournament at the Esports World Cup 2025 (EWC 2025) felt like an intense experience — even for the viewers. The 16 participating teams dived into the mayhem of single-elimination brackets, and all matches were packed into five days.
The MongolZ thrived in this environment! Not only did they lift the trophy, but they also defeated one of their biggest opponents on the way, Team Vitality.
This victory is a great achievement for The MongolZ. Before the CS2 EWC 2025, they won only one top-tier tournament, YaLLa Compass 2024.
Easy run?
The CS2 Esports World Cup 2025 is built in a way that mainly excludes early matches between top teams. High seeds face low seeds. The MongolZ played versus GamerLegion and 3DMAX in their first two matches.
Well, there is no such thing as easy matchups on this level of Counter-Strike esports! 3DMAX are not among the favorites on the CS2 betting sites, but they defeated NAVI in their opening match.
For The MongolZ, those were two victorious days, even if they lost game 2 versus 3DMAX.
The downfall of Vitality
It feels like the semifinal of the Counter-Strike 2 EWC 2025 was the most challenging for The MongolZ. They faced Vitality! This team smashed opponents mercilessly in the first half of 2025 to achieve a phenomenal tournament win streak.
A few times, it was Vitality who held The MongolZ away from big trophies. That was the case with the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 — Vitality defeated The MongolZ in the grand final.
This time, the match went very differently! Vitality won game 2 on Dust II, but then, they got beaten hard on Nuke: with 10:2 in favor of The MongolZ in the first half.
Many in the CS2 community anticipated the downfall of Team Vitality, a lot because of the trash talk habits of apEX. After winning the Austin Major, Vitality cannot achieve big successes.
- They lost to MOUZ at IEM Cologne 2025.
- The MongolZ defeated Team Vitality 2:0 at BLAST Bounty Fall 2025.
Team Spirit’s failure. Team Falcon’s rollercoaster
As for big surprises, the CS2 EWC 2025 treated us to a few.
- NAVI got their second bitter loss. Previously, Astralis defeated Natus Vincere at BLAST Bounty Fall 2025. Now, this happened in the match versus 3DMAX. NAVI performed a nice comeback to win game 1, but then, they fell apart. Losing 1:9 in the second half of Inferno was a disaster.
- Team Spirit lost to HEROIC in the opening match of the CS2 Esports World Cup 2025. The same roster celebrated victory at IEM Cologne 2025 and BLAST Bounty Fall 2025. Perhaps having only two days between tournaments is not a good idea.
- Falcons are following their weird tradition of having great matches one day and then being destroyed to dust on the next one. They defeated MOUZ, which is a big deal considering how strong these opponents are. Then, Falcons lost in the semifinal to Aurora, which is rather unexpected (with full respect to Aurora).
Finals at the CS2 EWC 2025
Esports World Cup 2025 featured 3rd-place matches for its tournaments, and CS2 is no exception.
Team Falcons suddenly recovered to their good form and defeated Vitality. Or maybe the downfall of Team Vitality intensifies?
The MongolZ faced Aurora Gaming in the grand final. The opponents had a great start and managed to reach overtime in game 1, which Aurora still lost. The following two games were strongly in favor of The MongolZ, so they won the CS2 EWC 2025.
Surprises, downfalls, and just great shooting matches — CS2 esports delivers as usual! All this makes the next big tournament even more interesting. BLAST Open Fall 2025 starts with a closed qualifier, from Aug. 27 to Sept. 01. Then, the tournament has LAN Finals, from Sept. 5 to Sept. 7.
For Counter-Strike 2 coverage, news, and updates, stick around on esports.gg.