The Ukrainian organization can look forward to a winner’s purse of around 190,000 euros as well as a direct invitation to the 2022 World Finals, where it will be able to officially defend its title from the previous year.

Is it 2021 again?

NAVI lost to OG in the group stage and had to fight for its own tournament life against the German team BIG, but the victory over this quintet was the starting spark for a drive that no one was able to stop: the FaZe Clan, the most successful team so far in 2022 in “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” (CS:GO), NAVI easily brushed away in a one-sided 2:0 series (16:6, 16:1).

The semifinals against group winners OG presented the last major hurdle, as the international quintet picked up a narrow victory over NAVI in the second game of the series on Inferno to put the team in contention for a spot in the final, but Mirage clinched the decision in favor of the Eastern Europeans.

In the final, the opponent was Team Vitality. The French-Danish contingent already had to concede defeat to a dominant NAVI in last year’s Fall Finals, and this story was now repeated in Lisbon: NAVI made the 2-0 victory (16:8, 16:5) over its rival look surprisingly easy and relaxed.

20th MVP Award for s1mple

Hardly any NAVI success goes by without additional laurels for Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev – the exceptional talent was awarded the 20th MVP (Most Valuable Player) award of his career for his performance in the tournament. This record is a new historical milestone that will be emulated by young professionals in the years and possibly decades to come – “young” being relative, as “s1mple” himself is only 24 years old and normally still has a few more years as an active player ahead of him.

Strong substitute for NAVI

NAVI’s victory, especially against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of the team’s homeland, is an exceedingly emotional affair for the players – and for no one this should be more the case than for Viktor “somedieyoung” Orudzhev.

The balance of power in the “CS:GO” scene is thus more equal and exciting than ever for the rest of the year: FaZe dominated the start, but with the victories of Cloud9 at the IEM Dallas and NAVI at the BLAST Premier Spring Finals it has become clear that by no means a long one-sided dominance is to be expected.