CS2 World Championship Winner Prediction: Why Favorites Failed and Who Will Win EWC?
The third tournament from the sheikhs in Riyadh is gradually beginning to acquire the status of a truly prestigious championship, and teams are unlikely to treat it carelessly. The Olympic system without a second chance gives the tournament special charm, as many sensations occur precisely in the first matches. Imagine if a Major were held under such a system – Vitality would have gone home after losing to Legacy. We decided to skip predictions for the first matches and were right, as NAVI, Astralis, Team Spirit lost their matches, while Vitality and MOUZ were incredibly close to failure. In this article, we’ll discuss the remaining matches and try to predict the winner’s name, throwing the randomness of the first meetings out of our heads.
Aurora vs HEROIC
Let’s start with the remaining quarterfinals, and first today will be Aurora and HEROIC, who defeated FaZe and Team Spirit in the first stage. If the Turkish collective could be considered favorites and their passage logical, then HEROIC really pulled off a sensation. Let’s start with them.
Even during BLAST Bounty Season 2, rumors went around about TN1R’s buyout, and many sources claim he will end up precisely in the Dragons’ camp instead of zontix. Various reasons are cited – from gameplay to personal and even legal (document problems for the Ukrainian esports player). However, that’s not what matters now, as there’s been no official confirmation yet. What’s important is different – TN1R is definitely leaving HEROIC, and in the sniper role, a Spirit Academy player is currently “taking a test,” and in fact, this is now more of a mix than a full-fledged team. On top of everything, they came to EWC without a coach, who had a planned wedding. Therefore, the victory over Spirit looked extremely illogical until it became known that 3 players played the match with fever and health problems. Yes, it’s that banal, but players are still people and the human factor always has a place.
As for the Turks, everything is more than logical here – they’re simply better than FaZe, and throughout all of 2025. Yes, they had slumps, but the most important thing Aurora has is a truly cohesive collective, and HEROIC’s current mix shouldn’t cause them problems. One can believe that HEROIC will play well on one of the maps, but victory in another full BO3 would be beyond fantasy. Aurora’s only problem is inconsistent woxic, but in the sniper battle, Alkaren won’t pose strong competition.
Our prediction – Aurora advances. We won’t be fooled by the “miracle” from HEROIC in the match against Spirit and will look at the match with a cool head.
MOUZ vs Falcons
The last quarterfinal is obviously the most competitive among all matches, and it’s much harder to identify an obvious favorite here. On one hand, MOUZ is more stable and cohesive, but their game against VP raised many questions. Especially picking Overpass instead of Train as the decider, where the Bears simply gifted the Mice passage to the next stage. Perhaps MOUZ didn’t think it would come to a third map, or maybe they didn’t want to reveal strategies on Train and are preparing to play it against Falcons. Falcons love to pick Train as their own map, and perhaps the Mice were counting on meeting them even before the tournament started and surprising with new preparations.
Will this be a problem for NiKo and company? Definitely not for Kovac. The Bosnian came to the “home” tournament in great form and even in unusual roles played a very quality match against his former team. Individually, there are no complaints about Falcons players, but as a collective – there definitely are. In our view, MOUZ looks preferable here, but if they start getting destroyed on the server, they definitely won’t return to the game and we’ll see two maps with a conditional score: 13:6, 13:8.
When you have such performers as m0NESY, NiKo and kyousuke on your team, the result depends only on yourselves. If these guys are “in the flow,” they can’t be stopped, so in the prediction, you need to choose between stability and faith in incredible potential. We suggest taking a risk and believing in Falcons’ firepower, especially since MOUZ undermined trust in the match against VP.
Vitality vs The MongolZ
Matches between these teams are already some kind of El Clasico in the late stages of tournaments, and this time Vitality will be taking revenge for recent defeats. Both collectives reached the semifinal quite routinely, and you can’t say that either of them is in better form. Therefore, we’ll consider this match “from a clean slate” without any conclusions from already played games at EWC.
Since we chose to consider the confrontation in this key, Vitality, of course, looks preferable here. ZywOo returned to the top of the scoreboard in every match and is ready to return the team to the winning path they unexpectedly strayed from. You can see that the collective really doesn’t like that they stopped in the semifinal two tournaments in a row and they’re unlikely to allow something similar to happen a third time.
The Mongols have slightly changed tactics and even stop being “good” guys. The team captain often trolls losers on social media, and Senzu, albeit with a smile on his face, shows the middle finger to opponents. The guys have definitely loosened up, and for them, this is a huge step forward, as such things help get out of the comfort zone and challenge themselves. However, this won’t work against apEX, and after the match, the Frenchman will most likely deliver his next emotional performance.
Vitality has slightly better chances in this semifinal – somewhere 60-40 in favor of the current Major champions.
Chances of Winning EWC
Hardly anyone will have doubts that in the lower part of the bracket, the obvious contender for reaching the grand final is in the MOUZ/Falcons pair, and we would gladly watch kyousuke pass the test against Vitality. If this still happens, then Falcons don’t have as many chances, like any team against Vitality in BO5. Despite two defeats, it’s hard to imagine that someone is capable of beating Vitality on three maps. On the other hand, in Falcons’ case, outgunning opponents on Train, Nuke, Mirage and even Dust 2 (despite 0 wins in the last three months) is quite within their power.
However, Falcons, like MOUZ, need to win one more match before reaching the grand final, so it’s logical that their chances of victory are even lower than The MongolZ’s. Therefore, at the moment, we distributed the chances of victory as follows:
- Vitality – 47.24%
- The MongolZ – 15.02%
- Falcons – 12.55%
- MOUZ – 11.60%
- Aurora –10.18%
- HEROIC – 3.39%
