The Team Spirit Counter-Strike 2 team became the champions of the corresponding event of the 2026 Esports World Cup. In the finals, the Russian team defeated FUT Esports with a score of 3:1 on the map and won the championship trophy and generous bonuses.
Image source: HLTV
For the Team Spirit organization, this success became the second in one day at a major esports tournament. Earlier today, the Team Spirit Dota 2 team defeated Team Vision 3:2 in the finals to win The International 2026. So, within a few hours, the organization claimed two major titles simultaneously. Team Spirit, meanwhile, became the first team in history to win The International three times – the team had previously won Valve’s major event in 2021 and 2023.
This is the second Grand Slam championship won by the Spirit CS team this season. Previously, the team won the PGL Astana championship. Victory in Paris is also particularly important for coach Sergey “Harry” Shavaev, who has been criticized recently after returning to the main lineup. Prior to this, the team had shown good results under the leadership of Dmitry “S0tF1k” Forostyanko, who temporarily replaced Hally.
For the very young FUT Esports roster, this is the first grand final of such a major event in history. The team went undefeated in Paris until the final and defeated Mouz and Furia in the playoffs. FUT and Spirit were evenly matched on the first three maps of the deciding series, but after narrowly defeating Ancient in overtime, the team was unable to provide serious resistance to Nuke.
FUT started the series with the unexpected choice of Cache – the team had never played on this map before. The international team’s aggressive style soon brought results: FUT took a 3:0 lead and then continued to increase their advantage. After a tie in the first half, the team led by Auron “Krabeni” Fazilia played confidently in the second half to push the score to 12:6. Spirit tried to get back into the game but was unsuccessful – FUT won the first map with a score of 13:10.
On the Anubis map, the Elf lineup has a chance to win back. FUT started better again, leading 4:1, but then the mental defense almost completely stopped the opponent. Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov, Daniil “donk” Krishkovits and Andrei “tN1R” Tatarinovich helped the team win nine of the next ten rounds to bring the score to 11:5.
However, FUT did not give up and evened the score at 12:12, which was impressive. In overtime, tN1R took the lead with eight kills in three rounds before Spirit ended the map with a score of 16:13.
Ancient becomes melee again. FUT got off to a good start on the third map of the series, but Spirit gradually fought back and evened the score with a break – 6:6. In the second half, FUT took the lead again, gaining a 12:9 advantage, but Spirit successfully dragged the game into overtime. Boris “magixx” Vorobyov and tN1R played key roles. In overtime, Spirit gave no chance to its opponents and defeated Ancient with a score of 16:14, taking the series lead.
After that, FUT basically lost the initiative. On Nuke, Spirit played a strong first half and entered the break with a 10:2 lead. Miroslav “zont1x” Plachot became one of the main characters in this part of the map, providing the team with important multi-kills on several occasions. FUT failed to organize a counterattack, and Spirit finished the map with a score of 13:5 and won the entire finals 3:1.
In addition, it is worth paying attention to the performance of donk. The 19-year-old Spirit player was named the 2026 Esports World Cup MVP with a rating of 1.50. This is the 12th time that a Russian player has won the MVP award from HLTV. In the decisive battle against FUT, he also became the highest-scoring Spirit player with 88 kills, 70 kills, and a rating of 1.36.
Finally, we would like to add that this victory is the second for the Team Spirit organization within the framework of the 2026 Esports World Cup: previously the club won the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang tournament and finished 5th-8th in Dota 2. Spirit earned a total of 2,200 points in the club standings, which placed the organization in sixth place in the EWC 2026 overall standings and earned $1.4 million. The overall champion of all EWC events in 2026 is the AG.AL club, with 5,300 points and an additional $7,000,000 in prize money. The Falcons are in second place with 4,600 points and $5,000,000. In third place is Team Vitality with 3300 points and $4,000,000.
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