Majority of top 10 to skip PGL Masters Bucharest despite date adjustment

29-9-2025 13:59

Aurora will be the highest-ranked team taking to the server in Romania.

PGL has announced the team list for PGL Masters Bucharest, a $1,250,000 studio event set to run October 26-November 1 in Bucharest, Romania.

Of the 16 teams set to attend, Aurora and Astralis are the only sides currently ranked in the top 10 on the VRS, with half currently ranked outside the top 20.

The potential team list for PGL Bucharest Masters was the subject of some deal of discussion recently, due to the fact it was originally scheduled to end on November 2, the day before the start of IEM Chengdu.

Strike #6: A long way from Bucharest to Chengdu

Despite PGL adjusting their schedule to allow for more travel time between the European and Chinese events should teams wish to attend both, only Astralis, HEROIC, 3DMAX and paiN have signed up for both tournaments. The majority of top teams have opted to decline PGL Bucharest Masters.

The event in Bucharest will see 16 teams play out a Swiss-system BO3 group stage, with the top eight making it to the playoffs. A single-elimination BO3 playoff bracket will then take over, featuring a third-place decider and BO5 grand final.

The teams set to attend are:

ez win for jks

2025-09-29 14:00

1 reply

He can’t even win against gen one. It’s feel like liaz make their game plan more accurate maybe he was the true igl idk

2025-09-30 09:35

can't wait to see Aurora loose the final again

2025-09-29 14:02

6 replies

they won't make it to final regards

2025-09-29 14:13

2 replies

Possible

2025-09-29 14:15

they will, just to lose the final, as is their habbit

2025-09-29 15:34

if they lose the final against these S- tier teams, they must gonna disband or change the roster.

2025-09-29 16:22

It's just gonna be another tweet about how they all have backpain and nausea

2025-09-29 18:27

They all just had a really great time with their families during the month or so break and need time to get back into form. And then they will miss them again and it will be hard and emotionally draining.

2025-09-30 07:36

still decent lineup

how does this affect mazays legacy

2025-09-29 14:03

oh no top teams decided to skip another useless shit event, ESL TOLD THEM TO

13 replies

why is it useless and shit when the prize pool is so large and the vrs points are in contention?

2025-09-29 14:46

12 replies

every event has 1 million prize pool, every event has vrs points as well

2025-09-29 14:52

10 replies

I am pretty sure not every event has a mil prize pool but that clears things up for me. I got everything I neede to know that I am talking to just a hater not someone with logic behind their statements.

2025-09-29 14:53

whatenever

2025-09-29 14:54

PGL has 400 000 for first place, the impact of the win will be much larger than IEM. Also less competitive field so much better chance to have a good results.

2025-09-29 19:22

7 replies

do u really think vitality or falcons or even navi care about getting few thosands more instead of playing in frong of a crowd even in group stage and possibly winning more prestigious event

2025-09-29 19:35

Vitality, Mongolz or Falcons don't need to care, take like NAVI or FaZe should definitely care as they are dropping in the rating pretty fast. I'm not even talking about Virtus.Pro, Chengdu is a dead row for them

2025-09-29 19:51

navi are not dropping out of nowhere, they will be wihin top 12 easily and I think for their sponsor much more important to play in chendgu then in dallas, faze wlways liked to play in front of crowd, do u really think kariggan, frozen, twistz sit and say yeah we need more points go to shitty studio events for points and not play in front of crowds against the best? as for the vitus pro I agree

2025-09-29 19:54

that's why they played StarLadder? Jumps7yl3r is right. please bring some logic to the table. not only pure hate.

2025-09-30 09:18

3 replies

no they played starladder because they will never play in russian to tournament, here's the logic my friend, no hate

2025-09-30 11:11

but why did they care then to play in such competition for "few thousands more"? without a crowd also.

2025-09-30 15:12

again they would not play in fissure and they decided to not see a month without any events and accept an invite to event from ukrainian TO to have more reps as well

2025-09-30 15:14

A Mickey Mouse tournament trophy doesn't count but ESL's does

2025-09-29 22:20

Another Fissure type event? Neat

2025-09-29 14:04

Even worse, look at the teams buddy xD

2025-09-29 22:17

ESL paying teams to skip PGL, what's new...

19 replies

they dont need to get paid to skip studio event

2025-09-29 14:09

And yet they all chose to attend online group stage of Blast. Curious

2025-09-29 14:20

9 replies

not all.

2025-09-29 14:21

Yeah, sure, technically you are right, Mongolz and Aurora skipped it and that's about it

2025-09-29 14:25

And Falcons

2025-09-29 14:27

not all, Mongolz and Falcons skipped. But unlike ESL, Blast is the one who kinda obligates teams participating for all of their events in order to obtain the club share by the end of the year. You can't skip a single one Blast event in order to obtain the share.

2025-09-29 14:26

5 replies

Oh, right, Falcons is the third one, thanks. But that's the point, it's backdoor agreements and management making teams attend events based on that + club shares and frequent flyers and all that. Even if Faze or NaVi has like no chances in Chengdu. Or VP, for example

2025-09-29 14:29

VP is the dumbest, they could easily have declined. ESL is not forcing them, they have 0 chances in Chengdu and the audience don't care about them. I bet ESL don't care about them either.

2025-09-29 14:33

ESL also has some rules in place that you can't skip more than 1 tournament in a year or some shit like that, otherwise you give up their club share incentive

I know, but for ESL you can at least skip one. For Blast you can't skip not even one. But even so... Spirit already skipped two this year: Dallas and Melbourne. Aurora also: Melbourne and now Chengdu. So maybe you can skip two for ESL.

2025-09-29 14:37

You can skip three during two years period if i'm not mistaken

2025-09-29 15:45

hmm attend a studio mickey mouse event or go for the prestigious IEM Chengdu with public attending for all stages and then stop by Blast Hong Kong happening few days later? It must be a very hard decision 🤔

2025-09-29 14:19

Iem chengdu is not that prestigious but the simple fact that it has a crowd is a reason to attend

2025-09-29 16:24

prestigious lmao

2025-09-29 19:36

I think top teams would rather prefer some extra days of rest and preparation rather than a rat race before Chengdu and BLAST

4 replies

The Blast thing explains like 4 of them (it's Rivals next, right?), there's still the other half of top 10 missing at least.

2025-09-30 07:40

Yeah but there's Chengdu first, and it's an EGS + arena event.

2025-09-30 08:20

It's not like any of those teams not in top 4 for Rivals have any chances at EGS anyway, it's basically between Vitality and Spirit. Maybe Mouz and Mongolz if they step up a bit (still will need next year's Cologne major or Krakow). Doubt Furia and G2 will keep going with the same success rate for long (I mean, G2 just lost to GM8s and Furia to Hotu at the very least, both on LAN, so consistency for sure isn't there), but I guess we'll see.

2025-09-30 08:57

Realistically, you are probably right, but orgs don't think this way. They enter any tournament aiming to win it. Because if they don't want to win, why even bother attending?

2025-09-30 09:25

Easy for SAW!

2025-09-29 14:06

Someone is gonna earn themselves a nice chunk of VRS points this event. I actually like we get to see more lower end teams play against a couple top teams.

Watch the forum users go berserk, when one of the semi-finalists enters top 10 VRS.

2025-09-29 14:11

I like to hope some of them learnt something from tyloo winning fissure 1. Not just tyloo had a huge bump in VRS either.

2025-09-29 14:12

I still see some people saying that NRG will make Stage 3 of Major because VRS broken.

These people are just lost in the VRS sauce. I mean basic research and you'll find mischief's prediction thing and it's impossible for nrg to make it.

2025-09-29 14:16

They organized a special tournament for our team.

2025-09-29 14:08

what excuse will maj3r use when they go out 0-3 to gentle mates, liquid, and pain?

8 replies

Looking forward to it

2025-09-29 16:16

He'll make a short tweet about how they should have won and how he should take all the blame then change absolutely nothing

2025-09-29 18:28

rare honest turk. respect

2025-09-30 23:39

Whats there to deny bro? They just keep throwing easy rounds after easy rounds every tournament then spew some random bullshit about how they are going to improve then do the same next tournament.

2025-10-01 07:19

totally agree with you man. but there are a lot of rabid turkish aurora fans who don’t care that they’ve stalled out and consistently perform worse than they should on paper. as an NA player I sympathize with being disappointed in the people representing your region. I like aurora, it’s been sad to see them fall off so hard this season

2025-10-01 15:29

I haven't been in any Turkish community but most of my friends that follow the scene agree with me. Its a dead team running for free travels and lodging at this point. I'll keep supporting them but they are pretty much hopeless. Especially when there isn't any upcoming Turkish talents that can replace Xantares. Once he leaves all the scene will be gone with him

2025-10-01 18:24

Majer pregnant then few days later he'll release news that it was gas

2025-09-29 22:16

LMFAOOOO BRO

2025-09-29 22:21

somehow they choke

We will finally be graced with a top tournament featuring NIP, fnatic and M8. This should be enough and celebrated but unfortunately PGL is greedy and acting ungrateful. Sad times for the scene :/

usually id be bummed out by this list, but its a studio event so whatever. hopefully their next events will have arenas

2025-09-29 14:14

This one was supposed to be in arena in Belgrade but idk if it was PGL's fault or some last minute thing, but the arena was reserved for a tennis tournament. Their next events will be in arena, I think except Bucharest

2025-09-29 14:31

wouldnt be surprised if the event was iem wii sports tennis

2025-09-29 15:00

either way i believe that the teams would want to attend chengdu, no matter if it was in belgrade or bucharest

"majority" aurora are the only ones lmao

is 9 not a majority?

majority sounds more like 3-4/10 are attending.. lol

2025-09-29 22:19

Majority, by definition, means it's at least 6 teams from top 10 skipping it Edit: wait, nvm, I read it as "3-4/10 are skipping" somehow

2025-09-30 09:01

AURORA VICTORY EZ

2025-09-29 14:22

tier 2 tourney with tier 1 budget/format, nice

PGL is nice tournaments, I also like seeing some other teams, maybe see nip and fnatic make some playoff games

first LAN trophy in a long time for Astralis inc

2025-09-29 14:39

ez for kl1mple

2025-09-29 14:40

Ban studio events.

2025-09-29 14:48

You're just asking for everything to be online then

2025-09-29 14:55

it's now or never aurora. give a little joy to turkish fans

2025-09-29 15:01

from an arena in belgrade with a field better than cluj and bucharest combined to a studio event in romania that nobody wants to play

2025-09-29 15:23

If it was in belgrade still nobody would've want to play. They all want to participate at IEM chengdu

2025-09-29 16:27

half the scene is gonna be in belgrade before and after chengdu either way, no reason not to play a 1.25 mil arena event with club share

2025-09-29 16:29

Brother the only reason top teams didnt attend is because there was no physicial way to travel in time from europe to chengdu regardless if the event was in bucharest or belgrade

2025-09-29 16:31

the latter part of the event has been pushed back so they can make it in time bro, it's even mentioned in the title

2025-09-29 16:34

really... do you really think that if the event was held in belgrade the teams would be eager to attend?

2025-09-29 18:31

yes for the two reasons I outlined above, not just the location

2025-09-29 18:33

2025-09-29 18:43

Teams bending their knees to ESL, what else is new

2025-09-29 15:35

No Parivision? Sad

2025-09-29 15:42

They were too low at the beginning of september to make it to invite list even with cuts like that. They needed like 6-7 teams more to refuse the invite make it They would have probably made it if ESL Challenger Cup ended 2 days earlier though

2025-09-30 09:11

No way this event is MVP or trophy worthy right? Im good with GIGACHAD Hooxie lifting one but I gotta be honest

2025-09-29 16:51

If Aurora doesn't win this, they will never win T1 tournament.

2025-09-29 17:14

Here is my take on why this is happening. Basically, teams gets a lot of money from ESL depending on them showing as much events as possible. Heard on a podcast that the share of revenue you get by showing up to events are like exponential. The numbers are here as an example, it's not the real ones. For example : you show up to 1 ESL event you get 5% of your share of the revenue, then 2 you get 15%, then 3 events 30%... etc.. making it really important to not just play a few events.. but ALL of them. (I don't know if ESL still got their system where teams could skip one and a half event per year) For big teams, the revenue is the most important. Heard this for multiple sources that for example to get revenue share from BLAST you need to play ALL THEIR EVENTS. Thus you saw every big teams playing BLAST Bounty because the orgs said so. PGL unless ESL is being talk to by Valve to ease their ways will keep getting a big team from here and there, but that's it. Maybe PGL money incentives isn't good enough. Or ESL is pressuring orgs just like the email they sent to all orgs to pressure them to not go to PGL Bucharest.

2025-09-29 17:34

If aurora loses this Xantares retires.

2025-09-29 17:35

NIP FNATIC Liquid Astralis most prestigious organisations in CS history

2025-09-29 17:36

Astralis)))) Virtus.pro with Sneg was great mousesports exist in counter-strike since 2002 Spirit for now the best org in the world probably

2025-09-29 22:28

Valve should really do something about it, club share revenue as ESL does it is nonsense and all the talk about opening the circuit, just goes down the drain. ESL fucks everything, gives you the worst format possible, but people can't get the Saudis wiener out of their mouths, like wtf?!?

2025-09-29 18:01