Natus Vincere defeated Aurora 3-1 in the Grand Final of ESL Pro League to claim the Season 23 title in the organisation’s first Tier 1 victory since IEM Rio 2024.
NAVI defeated the Turkish roster 13-7 on Mirage, before dropping Anubis in a tight 11-13 contest. A 13-8 victory on Nuke saw NAVI take firm control of the series before they took the title on Dust 2, 13-9.
The Grand Final saw a magnificent showing from under-pressure AWPer Ihor ‘w0nderful’ Zhdanov, racking up a 1.56 HLTV-rated performance across the four maps, delivering in several key clutches to secure NAVI the title.
On the other side of the server, legendary veteran rifler Ismailcan ‘XANTARES’ Dörtkardeş had yet another strugglesome final, ending with a meagre 44 kills and 62 deaths across the series.
makazze central to NAVI improvement at Pro League
While w0nderful delivered in spades in the final, the MVP of the event was Drin ‘makazze’ Shaqiri, whose impact was felt from the first Swiss match to the Grand Final, where a remarkable 1v4 broke Aurora’s back.
The Kosovan had consistently been a firepower buff to NAVI since joining, especially delivering on his favoured map of Ancient, but struggled with his decision-making and composure across the whole map pool prior to this event.
NAVI’s improvement as a whole at this event was best seen through makazze’s point of view. The young rifler showed far greater maturity at Pro League, both in his judgement of when to take aggressive duels and in his understanding of the map pool and how to work within NAVI’s structure.
In this tournament, NAVI and makazze seem to have discovered the point at which his impact is balanced with the tactical needs of the team within a round, an equilibrium that Maksim ‘kyousuke’ Lukin and Falcons are yet to find.
Considering NAVI’s map pool struggles in 2026, the balance found at this event across multiple maps will raise the floor of the roster significantly, potentially allowing NAVI to compete across more tournaments in 2026.
With the beast of Vitality looming large, whether this run, which saw NAVI largely avoid the top teams, is enough of a proof of concept to prevent potential roster changes is unclear, but they are at least showing signs of improvement. The same cannot be said for many of their rivals.
Opinion: Vitality are the biggest winners of ESL Pro League Season 23
As NAVI rifler Valeriy ‘b1t’ Vakhovskiy stated on the broadcast, “No Vitality, easy win.”
Somehow, one of the biggest winners of ESL Pro League is once again Vitality. The generational roster did not even play the event, yet came out on top in many people’s eyes due to the weakness of their rivals at Pro League.
Prior to ESL Pro League, there was a clear stratification at the top of Counter-Strike. Vitality were understood to be in a league of their own, but Spirit, MOUZ, FURIA, and Falcons were understood to be the chasing pack.
After ESL Pro League, the picture is much more muddy.
While Spirit’s form continued to be uncertain under Boris ‘magixx’ Vorobyev, they still have Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets. The Russian prodigy was understood to give Spirit somewhat of a safety net, meaning they should not lose to lesser opposition.
Meanwhile, commentators like Alex ‘Mauisnake’ Ellenberg openly discussed that the tournament was MOUZ’s to lose. While anxieties continued to exist around ‘choking’ or stage struggles, MOUZ’s overall floor should have guaranteed them at least a Grand Final berth.
MOUZ and Spirit both fell in the quarter-finals to teams they were expected to easily topple. Elsewhere, FURIA were eliminated in the Swiss Stage, but would have missed their IGL Gabriel ‘FalleN’ Toledo at LAN if they had qualified.
Combined with Falcons’ group stage exit at IEM Kraków, which again exposed the team’s lack of cohesive coordination, it seems like all the presumed top teams are crumbling under the stress Vitality is putting on the scene. They are falling back towards the pack, rather than getting closer to Vitality.
The picture now is that Vitality are at the top, then a gap of unimaginable depth, and then the teams stretching from MOUZ to G2 clustered beneath them. The gap to Vitality has never looked larger.
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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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