NAVI knock out Spirit to reach the playoffs

NAVI beat Spirit in a three-map series at PGL Masters Bucharest, becoming the last team to qualify for the playoffs. They won Cache 13:2 and Anubis 13:3, and although they lost Dust2 10:13, they completed the series in their favor.

This win was the third victory over Spirit in roughly the last three years. Of the 15 matches between the two teams, NAVI's wins have stayed at one-third of the total. Their most recent wins came in the group stage of IEM Katowice 2025. The team reached the playoffs for the first time since winning IEM Atlanta and showed they had recovered from a weak start to the season.

On Cache, NAVI's veto surprised Spirit. makazze stood out on defense, while Spirit made mistakes on the T side. At one point they wasted a 5v3 advantage and entered the crowded B site even though they knew A was empty. That mistake set the tone for the first half and widened the score gap.

On Dust2, Spirit lost the pistol round but in the second half sh1ro and donk's AWP setup pushed their opponent hard. However, NAVI turned the result in their favor again thanks to magixx's defense on Middle and the impact of tN1R and sh1ro. On Anubis, iM and makazze, together with w0nderful's AWP performance, disrupted Spirit's gun round setup. donk had a 0.41 rating, the fifth-lowest LAN map performance of his career. At the end of the match, w0nderful finished off Spirit's morale with a 4k AWP on one HP.