paiN eliminate BIG from IEM Cologne

The German squad has now failed to advance to the second stage in Cologne for the fourth consecutive year.

paiN survived the first round of the lower bracket with a 13-11 victory on Inferno, the decider map, in their series against BIG, following two one-sided affairs on each team's map pick.

BIG, who have not played in front of the crowd in Cologne since 2018, when they had a miracle run all the way to the grand final with Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield on the AWP, will once again miss out on the dream of playing in front of their fans.

The only player left from those days is Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz, but BIG have also failed to make any impression at all at home for years, arena or not, as they haven't made it through the first stage of IEM Cologne (previously known as the play-in), since 2021.

The series wasn’t particularly spectacular in the first two maps, Ancient and Nuke, where both of the teams won their picks without much struggle. Worth mentioning is a 2.48-rated CT side of Ancient by Jon "⁠JDC⁠" de Castro, who ended it with 150 ADR, and helped his team take a 6-6 after the first half of play to a 13-7 victory.

Nuke was all paiN from the start after Lucas "⁠nqz⁠" Soares kicked it off with a quad in the pistol round and João "⁠snow⁠" Vinicius got early multi-kill rounds on the attack as the Brazilians put relentless pressure on BIG all the way to a 10-2 half. Enough to close it out without a hitch, 13-3, after the half.

Six straight rounds on the attacking side of Inferno, including a beautiful ace with a 1vs5 clutch by Franco "⁠dgt⁠" Garcia, put paiN ahead by a hair at the switch, 7-5.

The map stayed even going down to the wire, but paiN won two crucial rounds to turn it from 10-11 to 12-11, and put BIG on a forcebuy going into the final round, which snow closed out in a 1vs1 against a pinned down low-health Karim "⁠Krimbo⁠" Moussa on the A site.

Date	Matches
IEM Cologne 2025 Stage 1
25/07/2025	Astralis 18:45 paiN	Match

It’s the end of the road for BIG on home soil, but paiN are not out of the woods yet, as they will take on Astralis in the final round of the lower bracket to decide who goes through to Stage 2 and who goes home.