In-game leader bLitz went 42-26 as The MongolZ won NAVI’s own Cache pick from the T side and turned Inferno around after the break.
The MongolZ are in the grand final of IEM Beijing 2026 after a 2-0 win over NAVI in Saturday’s first semi-final: 13-10 on Cache and 13-11 on Inferno. NAVI came in as clear favourites with three straight series wins over The MongolZ, and they now drop into the third-place match. The MongolZ have not lost a series in Beijing.
The MongolZ2-0
NAVIStatsCache 13-10, Inferno 13-11
bLitz
makazzeThe captain at the front
Garidmagnai “bLitz” Byambasuren is the man who calls The MongolZ’s rounds, and over the past year he has mostly left the opening duels to the younger players around him. On Saturday he took them himself. He finished Cache 25-13 with 108.8 ADR, the best map anyone played in the series, and on Inferno he kept winning the first duel of the round on the T side, often with more than one kill to follow.
That mattered because the usual star was quiet. Usukhbayar “910” Banzragch, The MongolZ’s AWPer and 61-34 against FURIA on Wednesday, ended the series 23-26 with 47.4 ADR and went 9-15 on Inferno. Sodbayar “Techno” Munkhbold (35-29) and bLitz carried the load instead, and the team’s MVP post went to the captain.
Cache, on the side nobody starts
NAVI picked Cache, a map they were 5-2 on over the past three months while The MongolZ had won it once in five. That one win was against FURIA’s own pick on Wednesday, and The MongolZ repeated the trick: they chose to start on the T side, which teams almost never do on Cache, won the pistol and led 8-4 at the half.
Yesuntumur “nin9”, a month into his time on the team as the second voice next to bLitz, explained the choice in his post-match interview.
I think on every [Cache] we played previously, we started [CT] side and then after, if like T’s get momentum, it was kind of hard for us to do stuff on the map. We just thought it’s better if we start here and then we can snowball from there.
The T half was messy rather than clean: makazze even stuck a 10-second defuse to deny 910 a clutch. Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen singled out the rounds NAVI lost to MongolZ teams on half buys. “We lost against two weird buys, like one time I think it was like AK saved and one guy AWP saved,” the in-game leader said.
NAVI’s T side then did what it should have done. They won the second pistol, Aleksib’s clutch gave them their first lead of the map, and the score reached 10-10. The last three rounds belonged to The MongolZ: nin9 and bLitz shared five kills when NAVI had the opening picks, Anarbileg “cobrazera” Uuganbayar took four kills from the B site for map point, and Techno finished it with a triple spray.
Inferno slips away after the break
The MongolZ’s own Inferno pick started badly. NAVI won the pistol, held 7-4 midway through the half, and b1t even knifed a MongolZ player who walked onto the A site. Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov was back to the form that carried NAVI past PARIVISION on Friday, defending the B site alone in one round and finishing the map 21-13, the best line on the server.
The last round of the half went to nin9, who won a 1v2 to cut NAVI’s lead to 7-5.
NAVI won the second pistol as well, and that should have been the start of a run. Instead The MongolZ won the very next round with pistols, with 910 already up banana and catching iM before NAVI knew he was there.
The second half was a trade of single rounds. The MongolZ levelled at 8-8, NAVI answered, and it was 11-11 after a NAVI push towards A melted into 910’s AWP and bLitz’s support. cobrazera and 910 then took two early kills for match point, and the series ended on a bLitz flash that blinded NAVI’s B push, with cobrazera taking two of the four kills.
Aleksib did not look for excuses on stage. “We really wanted to reach the final but just ended up playing poorly today, but yeah, Mongols is on fire right now and they deserve it,” he said.
A Bo5 that comes early
The MongolZ arrived in Beijing after a group-stage exit at PGL Masters Bucharest, with nin9 only a month into the lineup. They have now beaten Legacy, HEROIC, FURIA and NAVI without dropping a series, and their last series win over NAVI before Saturday came at PGL Cluj-Napoca in February.
nin9 did not pretend the lineup has everything worked out before the Bo5.
Well, if we weren’t ready, it’s like, I mean, we’re still not ready, but we’re winning, so I think we can do good tomorrow as well.
The grand final starts on , and The MongolZ are guaranteed at least $210,000. They face the winner of MOUZ against BetBoom, the second semi-final from . NAVI play the third-place match at , worth $160,000 to the winner and $120,000 to the loser.
Both teams head on to the PGL Major Singapore, where they start in Stage 2 later this month. NAVI lost the series on their own map pick, against a team they had beaten in all three meetings since February. We follow the rest of the event on our IEM Beijing 2026 page.
