A lot of heart attacks and close calls, but in the end, the results ended as we expected in the opening rounds of BLAST Open London.
The opening games were split into two days, with Group A played on August 27th and Group B on the 28th.
You can read our breakdown of these matchups here.
Group A
Vitality and William “mezii” Merriman headlined group A. The undisputed best team in the first half of the season had struggled to get the ball moving in quite the same manner after the summer player break. With their opening matchup to be against NA side M80, most assumed this would be a nice way for them to ease into the tournament… They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Even though M80 finished a BO3 at 4:30 BST, six and a half hours before their game against Vitality, they came to play. With two hours of sleep apparently being the cheat code, Rory “dephh” Jackson’s squad annihilated Vitality 13-3 on map one.
Despite finishing a BO3 at 4:30 am, @M80gg take map one against @TeamVitalityCS in the opening game of @BLASTPremier Open London 😲 pic.twitter.com/xHdrVjyHSX
— 🇬🇧 UKCSGO (@ukcsgo) August 27, 2025
Unfortunately, their success would not continue, as Vitality’s experience shone, just about closing it 13-10 on map three to secure their first win.
GamerLegion and Ashley “ash” Battye had a much easier time against Virtus.pro as they dominated with a clean 2-0. Sebastian “Tauson” Tauson Lindelof especially shone with a 1.50 HLTV rating, the best-performing player from day one.
This means GamerLegion will face a potentially walking-wounded Vitality. If their performance against M80 is anything to go on, this could be an amazing opportunity for GamerLegion to take down the world’s number one and secure their spot in London.
Is there a world that ash’s GamerLegion can beat Vitality to qualify for BLAST Open London Finals?
Rest assured, the chaos resumed right away after major underdogs, ECSTATIC, beat FaZe on map one, smudging Jakub ‘jcobbb‘ Pietruszewski’s debut.
For the people for live for the drama, they got disappointed twice in one day. Similar to Vitality, FaZe lost map one (Overpass in both occasions), and proceeded to clean shop and finish the series 2-1.
The young Polish rifler jcobbb had a rough start to his time on FaZe, but IGL Finn “Karrigan” Andersen came to his rescue on X to shut down the haters.
The final game of day one saw fnatic challenge Natus Vincere. Fans and critics alike were wondering to see if their mishap at EWC would be repeated, possibly giving Cai “CYPHER” Watson a way in to play in front of his home crowd.
Even though most doubts were about NAVI, they looked much cleaner than Vitality and FaZe earlier in the day. Natus Vincere won out the final game of the day in a convincing 2-0 manner.
Group A after day 1 – Credit: Liquipedia
Group B
Day two started with a new look Imperial take on an inform MOUZ. This was supposed to be a one-sided game. Mimicking day one, BLAST Open London is providing an excellent viewing experience, with scorelines that don’t quite make sense.
Felipe “skullz” Medeiros had a point to prove on his debut with Imperial as he boasted an extraordinary 1.94 HLTV rating on map one against MOUZ to secure the win 13-2. This upset was caused on Overpass – a certain trend is starting to form.
Staying true to the trend, MOUZ would then wake up and show why they are contending to be the best team in the world. Only 11 rounds dropped across maps two and three; the German Organisation took one step closer to playing in the OVO Arena Wembley.
G2 versus Liquid was a spicy first-round matchup. Both teams have been struggling to find their footing lately; a win here over a sizable opposition would be sure to boost one’s confidence.
Liquid has been very unfortunate to play Vitality twice in a row in the opening stage of a single elimination LAN, but has still put up a really good fight in the face of defeat. So there were high hopes to see what they could do against a team that wasn’t Vitality. But that hope was very quickly thrown down the gutter as they just got owned, only grasping 11 rounds across the series.
G2 advance through the upper bracket with vigour, as the NA squad are once again left wondering what went wrong.
Spirit aiming to claim a third title since the player break
FlyQuest had the rather unfortunate first-round matchup against the superhuman donk and Spirit.
The CIS team have taken over Vitality as the number one team on the VRS leaderboard after their two tournament wins in a row post player break. FlyQuest, on the other hand, is not in its final form as they are still fitting in Justin “jks” Savage and are without a coach. They will be playing BLAST Open London with their analyst, Ricardo “JTR” Júnior.
Understandably so, it proved to be a difficult game for the Aussies as they only got nine rounds across the series and meekly fell into the lower bracket.
SOMEONE STOP THIS MAN 🙃 @donk1337 with the ACE and the clutch #BLASTPremier pic.twitter.com/TukTyFh8xF
— BLAST Premier 💥 (@BLASTPremier) August 28, 2025
The final game of the lower bracket was a Brazilian derby. Major quarter finalists in Furia against Legacy, who made a name for themselves at the BLAST.tv Paris Major make battle on day two at BLAST Open London.
Furia coming in as the favourites proved it as Kaike ‘KSCERATO‘ Cerato and Mareks ‘YEKINDAR‘ Gaļinskis made a mockery of their adversaries, both exceeding a 1.30 HLTV rating.
Group B after day 1 – Credit: Liquipedia
