BLAST Bounty Season 2 Predictions: A Tier-1 Event Without the Tier-1 Teams?

Plenty of people were waiting on this one to get a first read on the top teams’ form after a long break. Instead, it seems the biggest names in CS were in no rush to cut their holidays short — and promptly bombed the online stage, missing the LAN finals in Malta. Vitality, Falcons, FURIA and Aurora stayed at their bootcamps, easing back into shape at their own pace, while NAVI skipped the event entirely. That left just Spirit and MOUZ to carry the tier-1 banner into the decisive playoff stage.

So let’s dig into this intriguing tournament and try to figure out who walks away with the first big trophy of the 2026 season’s second half.

Why did the favorites flame out?

Before we get to the form of the remaining eight, it’s worth asking what actually happened to the favorites. On paper, BLAST Bounty’s format is built to hand the stronger teams the weaker opponents — so where’s the problem? The problem, we’d argue, is the format itself. Teams that pick their own opponents know exactly who they’re getting well in advance, which means they can start prepping far earlier. Add in the fact that the top teams have a far denser calendar and stretch their vacations as long as they can, while the weaker sides do the opposite and get back on the servers sooner.

The upshot: the “underdogs” show up with both a preparation edge and much stronger motivation — beating a top team means those precious VRS points. The online format only widens their head start, since the elite barely compete anywhere but LAN. So none of this should come as a shock; the script repeats itself over and over. And while the talk of “extending the vacation” and deliberately throwing matches isn’t entirely baseless, there’s a far more mundane explanation.

Spirit vs Liquid

Odds: 55–45 in Spirit’s favor

Team Spirit

We’ll start, naturally, with the top contenders for the trophy. For the record, they had their own share of headaches online and came within a whisker of joining their fellow top-5 sides in an early exit. But when your roster features donk — a man who never stops rewriting the record books, dropping 2.84-rated maps and topping the Faceit ELO leaderboard — losing to weaker sides simply isn’t an option. Danil threw himself into the game and “rested” by playing even more CS, something only a handful of top-10 players can pull off.

Spirit did stumble through a couple of shaky series against 100 Thieves and OG: both went the full three maps, cost them their win streak on Mirage, and forced them to sweat it out in overtime. Not the most convincing look, we’ll admit. So should you be worried about the Dragons heading into their clash with Liquid? You might be surprised, but our answer is — yes! And it has nothing to do with Spirit’s form, so let’s turn our attention to Liquid.

Team Liquid

Liquid have finally stopped suffering and cut ties with the two Poles who spent the entire past year dragging them under. Now they’ve got a seasoned in-game leader and a young AWPer — and the squad has looked genuinely sharp from the opening minutes. Their qualifying run handed them the worst possible seeding: time and again they were forced to pick from the strongest teams on the board. First came Vitality, then G2 — and they closed out both series 2–0, without breaking a sweat.

So where’s the catch? A few factors line up here: the new lineup’s honeymoon phase, and the total lack of intel their opponents have on them. The IGL has changed, roles have reportedly been reshuffled, and ELiGE is finally back in the positions where he used to run riot. JT’s tactics are still hard to read, too, and it’s doubtful Spirit will glean much from the two demos they’ve got. But there’s one more wrinkle in play…

In the chase for VRS, Liquid signed up for yet another LAN — and if they beat the Dragons but don’t make it to their opening matches at Pulse Beat I, they’ll bleed more points than they gain. So it’s anyone’s guess which way the org leans: on one hand, beat Spirit and land a great shot at the title; on the other, cold pragmatism. That said, remembering PARIVISION’s breakout and the way a first-season win rocketed them up, BLAST looks like the far more tempting prize. Only catch is, they’ve got to get past Spirit first.

3DMAX vs MOUZ

Odds: 75–25 in MOUZ’s favor

3DMAX

After a painful Major no-show, the French rolled the dice on some intriguing changes and signed a second AWPer — even though Maka was already juggling the sniper with IGL duties. Is this an attempt to run FURIA’s playbook, handing the AWP to younger, faster hands and freeing Maka up to focus on calling? Or a move born of desperation? The long run will tell, but for now the French are still all over the place.

Sure, they made it into the BLAST top 8 by beating FUT and magic — but then immediately flopped in two matches in the StarLadder StarSeries Fall qualifier against Gentle Mates and Walczaki. So it’s hard to draw any firm conclusion on 3DMAX’s form. Classic 3DMAX: one day they’ll drop a brilliant map and run right through the server, the next they’ll tighten up and let the game slip from the very first rounds.

MOUZ

The Mice, on the other hand, are fairly predictable so far. Their structure lets them cruise through group stages; what happens once the stakes rise is the open question. As we said, signing PR was a smart move that slots neatly into the MOUZ mold, where the game so often runs through whichever player catches fire. PR fits the bill so far: he finished dead last in the first match and comfortably top of the board in the second. That’s not inconsistency — that’s the MOUZ signature: give the reins to whoever’s on a heater.

They’ll get past 3DMAX, no doubt — but do we believe in these Mice in a potential semifinal against Spirit? Sadly, no. We noted that bringing in jL might have patched up their problems in the clutch moments, but PR doesn’t inspire that kind of confidence. It’ll be a fun matchup to watch, but we won’t get ahead of ourselves.

FaZe vs The MongolZ

Odds: 65–35 in The MongolZ’s favor

FaZe

Honestly, we just don’t buy into all the odes being sung to FaZe or the chatter about a return to the top of world CS. Yes, cracking the top 8 is an achievement for this version of FaZe — but who did they actually beat on the way to Malta? EYEBALLERS and DENDELE? Hardly convincing wins, which makes it far too early to pass judgment on this roster.

Sure, the new AWPer looks decent — noticeably livelier and fresher than broky — but let’s at least wait for LAN and, more importantly, for a proper sample size. Twistz is already declaring that the captaincy is a long-term thing, and here too we have our doubts: we remember these experiments all too well, and Russel is clearly getting ahead of himself with talk like that. He’s doing the right thing by rallying the youngsters around him and trying to become a real leader for them — but at 26 there’s still plenty of time to play for yourself rather than pour it all into others. The verdict: far too much hype around a team that isn’t actually in great shape.

The MongolZ

The Mongols brought in two young players at once, and for now our worries about the pressure on newcomers are on the back burner — though they haven’t fully evaporated. The match against FaZe is the perfect chance to show viewers, and their fervent fans back home in Mongolia, that mzinho’s departure wasn’t the final nail in the coffin of the team’s tier-1 ambitions.

We’d really hate to lose a side this distinctive — and so, of course, would the Mongols themselves — which is why we’re backing the boys to get past FaZe. Their motivation is simply greater: they play for an entire country, whereas at FaZe every man is thinking about his own success and keeping an escape route to another team in his back pocket. The MongolZ have no such fallback, and the remaining trio — 910, bLitz and Techno — will have to put in the work to let the young guns shine.

Astralis vs paiN

Odds: 50–50

Astralis

Honestly, it feels like this team is already tired of itself. HooXi is still living off memories of his G2 days, where he managed to lift a couple of big trophies; jabbi and Staehr are trying to keep Danish CS afloat as its supposed great hopes; and phzy and ryu still haven’t figured out how they ended up in Astralis in the first place.

NEO’s arrival hasn’t changed a thing so far — pretty much what we predicted in our summer transfer breakdowns. The boys won a couple of matches at BLAST but bombed other quals in that same online setting. Well, we’ll keep watching — though, frankly, we’re not sure there’s much here to analyze.

paiN

These Brazilians have never exactly been a model of consistency either, which makes their match the real coin toss of the night, with no telling who comes out on top. When nqz left paiN, it looked like a disaster — he was the lineup’s most reliable player. But with safee on board, it’s as if the team never lost its AWPer at all. You can’t say things have gotten better — but in this case, what matters is they haven’t gotten worse.

Title odds

We pulled all our bracket predictions together into one picture — factoring in the announced matchups, the likely playoff path, and who’s staring down which road. Here’s how we rate each team’s chances of lifting the trophy:

Spirit — 29.1%
MOUZ — 23.3%
Liquid — 19.0%
The MongolZ — 14.1%
Astralis — 4.3%
paiN — 4.3%
FaZe — 3.8%
3DMAX — 2.0%

Tellingly, the tournament has no clear favorite: Spirit sit on top, but Liquid and MOUZ are right on their heels — and the three of them have opened up a real gap on the rest of the field. The Mongols stand apart thanks to a friendly draw. The season’s first tier-1 event should be a wide-open one.

BLAST Bounty Season 2 Predictions: A Tier-1 Event Without the Tier-1 Teams?

Why did the favorites flame out?