A two-map win over G2, the second of them in triple overtime, has lifted NAVI from 33rd to 23rd in Valve’s Regional Standings and back inside the European places for PGL Major Singapore. Aleksib says NAVI would not settle for a quarter-final in Singapore, and the next step is FURIA, who start FalleN’s farewell tour in Bucharest.
For a month, the question around NAVI has been whether the organisation would miss a Major for the first time. One series in Bucharest has changed that picture. NAVI beat G2 2-0 on Saturday evening at PGL Masters Bucharest 2026, 13-11 on Nuke and 22-19 on Dust2 after three overtimes, and the win was worth 83 points in Valve’s Regional Standings.
In HLTV’s version of the standings, that moved NAVI from 33rd to 23rd in the world and from 26th to 16th in Europe, which has 18 places at PGL Major Singapore. HLTV’s invite simulator, which plays out every remaining match until the cut-off on 2 November, listed them as clinched on Sunday morning, with Stage 2 as their most likely starting point.
NAVI2-0
G2StatsNuke 13-11, Dust2 22-19
| NAVI | K-D | +/- | ADR | KAST |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 w0nderful | 54-34 | +20 | 71.0 | 73.8% |
 Aleksib | 43-33 | +10 | 75.2 | 75.4% |
 makazze | 41-45 | -4 | 75.3 | 66.2% |
| b1t | 40-45 | -5 | 78.9 | 73.8% |
 iM | 39-44 | -5 | 63.7 | 69.2% |
| G2 | K-D | +/- | ADR | KAST |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 huNter- | 48-46 | +2 | 72.6 | 63.1% |
 HeavyGod | 43-43 | 0 | 75.9 | 66.2% |
| NertZ | 41-46 | -5 | 67.8 | 66.2% |
| r1nkle | 35-42 | -7 | 63.6 | 66.2% |
 MATYS | 34-41 | -7 | 53.3 | 70.8% |
| NAVI in the standings | Before G2 | After G2 |
|---|---|---|
| World rank | 33rd | 23rd |
| Europe rank | 26th | 16th |
| Points from the win | +83 |
The next test comes on , against FURIA, with both teams on one win.
Two maps neither side was meant to play
Both teams went for what the PGL desk called punish picks. G2 brought Nuke back for the first time in over a year, and NAVI took Dust2, a map they had not played since they won it 13-11 against the same opponents at the Cologne Major in June, in a series G2 took 2-1.
iM told HLTV after the series that NAVI went into Nuke “kind of blind”, since they did not know G2’s positions and only worked them out around the fifth or sixth round. The pistol rounds carried them. NAVI won both and opened the halves 4-0 and 3-0, and G2 never quite closed the gap.
Dust2 was a different kind of match. NAVI started well, but their T side slipped, and when they reached 12 rounds G2 won three in a row to force overtime. In one of them, Nikita “HeavyGod” Martynenko killed two NAVI players on Long while fully blinded by a flash, a round iM still struggled to explain afterwards. HeavyGod and Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač kept G2 alive through two overtimes before NAVI won the third 4-1.
The two best players on the server were NAVI’s. Aleksib finished 43-33 and w0nderful had the most kills in the series, 54 against 34 deaths.
“Our backs against the wall”
Between the two maps, PGL’s broadcast aired an interview with Aleksib, recorded before the event. The host reminded him that NAVI have never missed a Major, and the captain did not play down the pressure. He called the season a disappointment, said NAVI “really fumbled” by missing the playoffs at ESL Pro League, and set a bar well above qualification.
We have already had our backs against the wall, now even more. And I do think that we just need to perform, because we also understand that if we just play poorly and go into the Major with just this kind of CS, we will not win the Major. So if you’re asking us, we wouldn’t be satisfied with a quarter-final loss on the Major. We would really want to be in the grand finals.
The Finn has been here before, he said. He reached a Major final with ENCE in 2019 and won one with NAVI in 2024, and on both occasions, in his words, “no one expected anything”. Asked about Lisbon, he said there were “plans made behind us by the staff”, but that the players were only thinking about Bucharest.
A month on the edge
The win ends a bad stretch in the standings. NAVI have played at every Major since DreamHack Winter 2013, but a winless StarSeries Fall in September sent them below the top 20, and even after two wins at ESL Pro League Season 24 they had drifted down to 33rd when Bucharest began. The registration for HyperX Retake Season 13, a tier-two LAN in Lisbon from 29 October to 1 November, was their safety net.
iM was careful not to read too much into one result. “I think it was good, but we started the same in EPL, so let’s not slip up,” he told HLTV, and he laid out the order of things: the playoffs in Bucharest first, and Lisbon only if that fails. “Because we need those LAN wins,” he said.
That plan still has a catch. The Swiss stage ends on 28 October and the playoffs run until 31 October, so a deep run in Bucharest would clash with Lisbon, which ends the day before IEM Beijing begins.
FURIA, and FalleN’s first farewell
FURIA are third in the world in both HLTV’s ranking and the Regional Standings, beat DENDELE 2-0 on Saturday and arrive on a five-series winning run. They have also won the last two meetings, 2-1 at IEM Kraków in February and 2-1 at IEM Rio in April. NAVI’s last win over FURIA came at the StarLadder Budapest Major in December.
The VRS stakes are lopsided. In HLTV’s projection, FURIA would gain a single point from a win, while NAVI would gain 84 and climb to 13th in the world. A loss would cost NAVI only five points, and leave them on one win and one loss.
The map pools give both teams something to aim at. Over the last three months NAVI have won four of their five Nuke maps, while FURIA’s best map is Inferno at seven wins in nine. NAVI’s Mirage, eight maps and two wins, looks like the opening FURIA will look for.
For FURIA, Bucharest is also the first stop on a farewell. On Friday night the team announced “FalleN’s final tour”, the four events left before FalleN retires at the end of the year: PGL Masters Bucharest, IEM Beijing, BLAST Rivals in Hong Kong and the PGL Major in Singapore. The Brazilian announced in April that 2026 would be his last season as a player.
NAVI are now playing for a better seed rather than a place, but that was not the case 24 hours ago. A second win tonight would make Singapore a formality and put NAVI one series from the playoffs, which by iM’s own plan would take Lisbon off the schedule.
