Four of the five NAVI players Vitality face for a playoff place at PGL Masters Bucharest on Tuesday lifted the Copenhagen Major trophy with jL in 2024. The stand-in plays his old team for the first time in Vitality’s colours, while Aleksib says nobody in NAVI marked the Major place they secured on Sunday.
Both teams are on two wins and one loss, and the winner of the series at joins FUT Esports and BetBoom in the quarter-finals. The loser gets one more chance in the fifth Swiss round on Wednesday.
For jL, the opponent is personal. He joined NAVI in the summer of 2023, and nine months later he was the MVP of PGL Major Copenhagen, the first Lithuanian to win a Major. Aleksib, iM, b1t and w0nderful won it with him, and all four are still in the lineup. HLTV ranked jL as the fifth-best player of 2024.
The split came gradually. jL took a voluntary break in July 2025, spent April and May of this year on loan at MOUZ, and became a free agent when he left NAVI on 1 July after three years. Six matches for Vitality at BLAST Open Porto followed, and so did a clear answer to the question of a return. On the BLAST analysis desk in September, he said NAVI looked too static and were “trying to play too perfect CS”, and that he had not left in order to come back.
Vitality did not meet NAVI in Porto, so Tuesday is the first time he lines up against them.
Match four, and the fifth is already certain
jL is in Bucharest because apEX is at home for the birth of his child, and the count matters beyond this event. Valve’s Regional Standings only list players who have played five of a team’s last ten matches, so five matches in Bucharest would put jL in apEX’s place on the roster Vitality are invited with to PGL Major Singapore. We explained the rule before the event.
The NAVI series is match four. A win sends Vitality to a quarter-final, a loss to the fifth Swiss round, and either one is match five. The threshold will be reached whatever happens on Tuesday evening.
His numbers so far are those of a player in an unfamiliar job. jL has 84 kills and 94 deaths in seven maps, and his ADR was the lowest on Vitality in two of the three series. In Monday’s 2-1 defeat to FUT, which ended a run of ten straight series wins, he finished 38-51.
Team Vitality2-0
9zStatsMirage 13-10, Cache 13-10
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luchov
HUASOPEEKTeam Vitality2-0
The MongolZStatsInferno 13-6, Cache 13-3
910
FUT Esports2-1Team VitalityStatsMirage 9-13, Dust2 13-9, Anubis 13-10
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dem0n
Krabeni“Every one of us expects to play the Major”
NAVI arrive with their own point to make. They came to Romania 33rd in the standings and at risk of missing a Major for the first time, then beat G2 and FURIA 2-0, and by Sunday evening every projection had them in Singapore. BetBoom stopped the run on Monday, winning 17 of the 21 rounds played after half-time on the two maps.
Speaking to HLTV after that defeat, Aleksib rejected the idea that the Major place had brought relief. The captain said the team’s satisfaction on Sunday was about the opponent, not the qualification.
I do think that as a group, we were just happy beating FURIA. It was not like celebrating anything that revolves around the Major. Overall, every one of us also expects to play the Major at least, you know? So that was not a topic at all.
He called the BetBoom loss “not the best day from us” and admitted that there had been “quite a few of these not best days in recent history”, but he said the team was getting the details right, with players remembering what was in the playbook. His recipe for Tuesday was to avoid frustration and not to “lose to ourselves”.
NAVI2-0
G2StatsNuke 13-11, Dust2 22-19
MATYSNAVI2-0
FURIAStatsAncient 13-10, Dust2 13-5
yuurih
BetBoom2-0NAVIStatsDust2 13-10, Nuke 13-9
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Three wins in four meetings for Vitality
The record this year favours Team Vitality. They beat NAVI 2-0 at IEM Rio in April, took all three maps at BLAST Rivals Season 1 in May, and won 2-1 at ESL Pro League Season 24 on 4 October. The exception came in the quarter-finals of IEM Atlanta in May, which NAVI won 2-1 on their way to the title.
The bookmakers price Vitality at around 1.35 and NAVI at around 2.90. Vitality top the Regional Standings and are second in HLTV’s ranking, while NAVI are 15th and 11th.
The map pools over the last three months point to where the series could turn. Vitality have won nine of their ten Cache maps and 80% of 15 on Dust2, while Anubis, where FUT beat them on Monday, is their weakest map at four wins from ten. NAVI have won only two of eight on Mirage, which Vitality win 75% of the time, and Ancient is a map Vitality have not played at all in that period. NAVI picked it against FURIA and won 13-10.
In HLTV’s projection of the standings, little changes for Vitality, who stay first either way. A NAVI win is worth 81 points and would lift them to 11th in the world.
Six series, three playoff places
Tuesday decides half of the remaining Swiss places. The three matches between 2-1 teams send their winners to the quarter-finals on 29 and 30 October. The three matches between 1-2 teams end someone’s tournament, and the winners join the 2-1 losers in Wednesday’s fifth round.
| Time | Match | Records | What is at stake |
|---|---|---|---|
 Team Liquid vs  Aurora | 2-1 vs 2-1 | Playoff place | |
 Nemiga vs  DENDELE | 1-2 vs 1-2 | Loser eliminated | |
 Team Spirit vs  MOUZ | 2-1 vs 2-1 | Playoff place | |
The MongolZ vs  Legacy | 1-2 vs 1-2 | Loser eliminated | |
| Team Vitality vs NAVI | 2-1 vs 2-1 | Playoff place | |
FURIA vs  TYLOO | 1-2 vs 1-2 | Loser eliminated |
Every result is on our PGL Masters Bucharest 2026 page.
