A day after losing their own Nuke pick 13-0, Spirit chose it again, won it 13-6 and left G2 to start the playoffs in the quarter-finals.
Spirit had every reason to leave Nuke alone on Thursday. On Wednesday they had lost their own pick of it 13-0 to FUT, and against G2 they were already a map down. They picked it anyway, won it 13-6, and then took Ancient 13-5. Team Spirit beat G2 Esports 2-1 (Mirage 9-13, Nuke 13-6, Ancient 13-5) in the Group B winners’ match at BLAST Rivals 2026 Season 2 and go straight to Saturday’s semi-finals in Hong Kong.
Spirit2-1
G2StatsMirage 9-13, Nuke 13-6, Ancient 13-5
tN1R
MATYS
huNter-G2 win the side they were not supposed to
For one map, G2 looked like the team that beat MOUZ on Wednesday. Mirage was their pick, and Spirit led 7-5 at the half on the CT side, with Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov and donk closing it with three rounds in a row. G2’s CT side on Mirage had been one of the weakest in the world this year. On Thursday it won eight of the ten rounds in the second half, and from 9-9 G2 did not drop another. Matúš “MATYS” Šimko and Guy “NertZ” Iluz both finished the map 20-12.
Spirit won two rounds on the T side, with donk, the most feared T-side player in the game, in their lineup. Flat T sides have been a talking point around Spirit all season, and this was another one.
Back to the map that broke them
Nuke was the test. Spirit had lost it 13-0 to FUT a day earlier, and they started on the T side. This time they led 8-4 at the half. sh1ro finished the map 23-10 with 121.4 ADR, the best line of the series. donk added 21-12. Boris “magixx” Vorobiev won a 1v1 against huNter- for six map points, and Spirit closed it 13-6.
G2 have now lost Nuke five times in a row. They have kept it in their pool, and Spirit punished it.
Ancient was not close
After a technical delay of around half an hour, the decider went the same way. Spirit held the CT side 8-4, won the second pistol round and lost only one more round. The kills were spread across the team: sh1ro went 17-9, donk 16-11 and Andrey “tN1R” Tatarinovich 15-14 with 99.1 ADR. On the other side, NertZ went 19-13 with 118.2 ADR, but MATYS, G2’s best player on Mirage, finished Ancient 4-15.
It is Spirit’s seventh series win over G2 in 2026, and they have not lost one to them this year.
Semi-finals for Spirit, Falcons for G2
Spirit, playing their first event since parting ways with chopper, have at least $130,000 secured and face the winner of Vitality against MOUZ on Saturday. tN1R said on Wednesday that winning Rivals would send Spirit to the Major with confidence, and they are now two series from the trophy. The win is worth 16 points on HLTV’s VRS calculator and lifts them to fourth.
G2 drop into Friday’s quarter-finals, where they play Falcons. The defeat costs them seven VRS points and two places on HLTV’s calculator, down to 13th. Both teams head to the PGL Major Singapore after Hong Kong, Spirit with a Stage 3 invite and G2 from Stage 2 on 28 November.
