The Turkish superteam consistently causes trouble for Team Vitality.
Team Vitality went flawless in the group stage of PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026. Their reward is to face off against the only core to beat them in a series in the first half of 2025.
Vitality avoided Aurora for all of 2025
2025 was a disappointing year for Aurora. Despite boasting one of the most consistent cores in the world, they failed to reach playoffs of both Majors.
Team Vitality had a year to dream of in 2025, winning both Majors and an ESL Grand Slam. It’s easy to forget that it started with losing to four of the Aurora players at the BLAST Bounty in 0-2 fashion.
Recent rematch in Krakow
One year later, after Vitality rose and Aurora stagnated, they faced each other again at IEM Krakow 2026 to play for a semi-final berth after Aurora changed a player. Even with a new player and a year of disappointments, Aurora still gave Vitality a challenge.
Now, Aurora come off a confidence-boosting win after making a 2-10 comeback against Astralis. Can they make a groundbreaking upset against one of the greatest happen? Let’s look at the individual stats:
The individuals: XANTARES is a win condition
| Aurora Player | HLTV Rating | Vitality Player | HLTV Rating |
| XANTARES | 1.27 | flameZ | 1.05 |
| woxic | 0.98 | ZywOo | 1.42 |
| MAJ3R | 0.77 | apEX | 0.81 |
| Wicadia | 1.06 | ropz | 0.91 |
| soulfly | 1.06 | mezii | 1.09 |
Vitality wins out in individual matchups according to role in close fashion. It’s three to two, with the biggest gap between the AWPers: woxic and ZywOo.
There is a significant gap between the lurkers: Wicadia and ropz. Evidently, ropz tends to perform below his usual level against the Aurora players. If he is able to bring good form to the quarter-final of Cluj, that could swing things heavily in favor of Vitality.
Vitality wins the average rating by nearly 0.2 rating. A lot of this comes down to ZywOo, a known superstar. XANTARES needs to perform on stage for Aurora to have a chance, something he struggled with in 2025.
The map pool: will Vitality remove Aurora’s Anubis?
Map win-rates over last three months
| Map | Vitality win % | Aurora win % |
| Ancient | 100 | 0 |
| Anubis | 100 | 80 |
| Dust2 | 100 | 67 |
| Inferno | 78 | 50 |
| Mirage | 50 | 40 |
| Nuke | 67 | 50 |
| Overpass | 100 | 57 |
In their last two series, four different maps have been played: Anubis, Mirage, Ancient and Overpass.
Aurora picks Anubis any time it is available. A home map for them, they have won four of their last four outings. Both Vitality and Aurora tend to ban Ancient the first chance they get.
Knowing this, Vitality have thrown a spanner into the works, choosing to ban Anubis instead of Ancient when they faced Aurora at IEM Krakow 2026. Vitality picked Ancient, which they barely won. That result may dissuade Vitality from trying the same thing again, preferring a safer pick.
A huge part of this series will come down to Anubis. If Aurora is able to pick it, it will give them a chance they would not have had otherwise. They can also leave Ancient open as they did last time, giving Vitality the option to pick it.
Vitality has variety as far as map picks. If it is open, they tend to go for Dust2. However, last time, they picked Overpass against Aurora, winning 13-7.
Match fixture
Vitality vs AURORA will be the third quarter-final of the day, starting at 15:00 CET on PGL’s Twitch and YouTube channels.
