The big craze in Counter-Strike this year has been travelling to local LANs all across the world to claim sacred LAN wins and climb the VRS leaderboards. The reason for this, the Valve Ranking system includes an extra modifier, increasing the relative power of LAN results over online results. Alongside this, many new teams have found this to be a successful way of attaining a VRS rank, as you need five games played to qualify for one, which can be tricky online.
EPIC.LAN 45 almost kicked off the trend in Europe, as coming out of the player break in the Summer, many top EU teams swarmed to Kettering. Because of this, for the first time in EPIC.LAN history, the grand finals featured no UK teams as Spanish side Iberian Soul beat the Danes from AaB.
Iberian Soul and AaB were not the only international sides, as they were joined by FUT, Alliance, The Last Resort and Glitchtech. Alongside these six teams, ECSTATIC had signed up but then couldn’t come due to visa issues, and Inner Circle similarly dropped out last minute due to scheduling problems.
Iberian Soul with the EPIC.LAN 45 trophy
This wasn’t even the first time an EPIC.LAN this year has attracted European talent, as NIP tried to sign up for EPIC.LAN 44 in February, but all tickets were sold out.
Many suspected that after HLTV featured 12 teams on HLTV, eight more than the usual four, European sides would flock to future EPIC.LANs in search of elusive VRS points. However, for EPIC 46, that isn’t really the case.
MINLATE, Prestige, Phantom Esports and Nemesis are the only four teams signed up, the highest ranked being Phantom, who sits 133rd in the world; the other three don’t have a VRS ranking. This is a far cry from Iberian Soul, who sat 37th in the world prior to EPIC.LAN 45. Despite not attending in the end, ECSTATIC were 27th in the VRS world ranking when they signed up for EPIC.LAN 45.
A big reason for the lack of teams attending could be the fact that this EPIC.LAN is outside of the Major qualification cycle. With the PGL Budapest Major invites going out on 6th October, teams are not as keen for VRS points as they were leading up to the Major. Alongside this, due to it being a BYOC, it is much harder for international teams to attend.
This will not be the first Open LAN for many of these teams, as both Nemesis and Phantom travelled to the Birch Cup in Poland. This wasn’t the only stop for Thomas “Thomas” Utting and co as Nemesis went straight to Latvia for the Urban Riga Open #1, but couldn’t make it to the HLTV stage of the event.
MINLATE crossed over the pond to America to compete in Frag Blocktober 2025, but similar to Nemesis’ outing in Latvia, didn’t make the HLTV stage. They did make it out of the group stage after securing a forfeit win over Liquid, who pulled out of the event, and a dominant win over American side Gabagool. Unfortunately, in the first round of playoffs, they lost to the South American side Sharks.
Thomas in the playoffs of the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023
François “AMANEK” Delaunay has played in Major grand finals, but can he do it on a rainy night in Kettering?
Prestige will be making their open LAN debut as the young Danish side travels to the UK with a new squad. Interestingly enough, in HLTV’s prospect report, Nicky “NickyB” Bruhn on Prestige was listed as 48th. However, not too long after, he was snatched up by Tricked.
The Danish side has a familiar face to UK CS in Spanish coach Victor ‘Monsalve‘ Domingo Monsalve, who was coach for Reason Gaming for six months in 2024.
There are currently 44 teams signed up for EPIC.LAN 46. Even if there won’t be too many European teams, the UK community has come out in their masses. As it stands, EPIC.LAN 46 has tied the Counter-Strike turnout at 44 teams at an EPIC.LAN, which was set earlier this year at EPIC 43.
HLTV coverage has already been confirmed for EPIC.LAN 46, but not the extent of the coverage. Last time, it was revealed the night before LAN started.
There will be a more detailed article coming out this week detailing the UK teams attending EPIC.LAN 46!
