Down 8-4 at the half of the deciding map, FUT won the first eight rounds after the switch and closed Anubis 13-10. xfl0ud finished the series with 57 kills, and FUT are the first team through to the playoffs of PGL Masters Bucharest.
Anubis has been the soft spot in Team Vitality‘s map pool. Over the past three months it was their weakest map, with four wins from nine, and FUT Esports won it 13-5 against them at the IEM Cologne Major in June, one of only two maps they had taken off Vitality this year. On Monday it was the map that ended a run of ten straight series wins for the world’s top-ranked team.
For a half, nothing pointed that way. Vitality had won Mirage 13-9, and on Anubis they were 8-4 up after their CT side, with FUT burning a timeout after five rounds. Then FUT won the second pistol round, beat Vitality’s force buy after it, and did not drop another round until they led 12-8.
FUT Esports2-1
Team VitalityStatsMirage 9-13, Dust2 13-9, Anubis 13-10
xfl0ud
dem0n
dziugss
Krabeni
A CT side Vitality could not read
The eight-round run was built on variety. FUT’s defenders did not hold the same positions round after round: some players took one kill and fell back, others re-peeked or pushed straight into Vitality’s T side, and Vitality never seemed sure where the next fight would come from. xfl0ud won one round on his own with four kills. Late in the run, Krabeni called a push out through B main and carpets, a move FUT had not shown on that side, and took three kills himself in the round. Vitality used their last timeout straight after.
Vitality’s T side finally won a round at 8-12, and then another. At 10-12 FUT’s coach coolio called a timeout, and FUT closed the map in the next round despite a mezii pre-fire that briefly gave Vitality hope.
The comeback mirrored Dust2, where Vitality had started 4-0 on their own map pick. FUT won six of the last seven rounds of the first half to lead 7-5, and from 7-7 they pulled away to 13-9. That map also turned the series around for Krabeni. The in-game leader went 6-19 on Mirage, but his T-side calling on Dust2 set up the rounds that forced a decider.
The quiet rifler takes over
xfl0ud had been quiet over the first two Swiss rounds, with 49.7 ADR against TYLOO and 63.2 against Liquid, the lowest on his team both times. Against Vitality he had 57 kills, second only to ZywOo, and the highest ADR on his team at 91.1. He was best on Anubis, where he went 23-16.
SunPayus was the only FUT player with more kills than deaths on all three maps, and finished 49-34. dem0n, the star of Sunday’s win over Liquid, added 51 kills.
On the other side, ZywOo (63-43, 94.6 ADR) and ropz (50-35) did their part. The other three did not: flameZ, mezii and stand-in jL all finished between minus 13 and minus 16. mezii, who has taken over the calling while apEX is away for the birth of his child, had 8 kills and 18 deaths on Anubis.
A defeat that settles jL’s count
The result changes more than the Swiss table. Valve’s standings model lists only players who have played five of a team’s last ten matches, which is why Pley wrote before the event that jL needed five matches in Bucharest to take apEX’s place on Vitality’s Major invitation roster, and SunPayus five to replace cmtry on FUT’s.
This was match three for both. Vitality now play at least two more: round four is jL’s fourth match, and whatever follows, a fifth Swiss round or a quarter-final, is his fifth. For FUT, a perfect Swiss run means fewer games. Their quarter-final will be SunPayus’ fourth match, and only a win there brings a fifth. A quarter-final exit would leave cmtry, now an Astralis player, on FUT’s roster when Valve takes its snapshot on 2 November.
Playoffs for FUT, one more step for Vitality
FUT now wait for the quarter-finals on 29 and 30 October. HLTV’s projection of Valve’s Regional Standings adds 75 points for the win and lifts them from ninth to eighth. Vitality lose 23 points but stay first, and on 2-1 they need one win from their next two series to join FUT in the playoffs. BetBoom and NAVI play for the other place on offer in round three at .
Follow every result on our PGL Masters Bucharest 2026 page.
MOUZ and Aurora recover from round-one defeats
Monday’s two morning matches were both 2-0, and in both the favourite won the underdog’s map pick.
MOUZ won their own Nuke pick 13-11 against The MongolZ and then took The MongolZ’ Mirage 13-9. PR had 45 kills to 24 deaths and 100.4 ADR. MOUZ go to two wins and one loss, The MongolZ to one win and two losses.
MOUZ2-0
The MongolZStatsNuke 13-11, Mirage 13-9
PR
nin9Defending champions Aurora needed overtime to take Nemiga‘s Mirage 16-14, then won Anubis 13-4. woxic went 50-25 with 100.6 ADR. Aurora also move to 2-1, while Nemiga drop to 1-2.
Aurora2-0
NemigaStatsMirage 16-14, Anubis 13-4
khaN
Xant3r
