One era has ended, and another has begun, as ESL have said goodbye to IEM Katowice and hello to IEM Kraków, the first prestige event of 2026. We have already seen some teams go through to Stage 2, but we’re convinced some others must have fallen back into old habits and travelled to Katowice instead – because they definitely didn’t show up.

In the undefeated group are BLAST Bounty Champions PARIVISION, 3DMAX, and G2, while we wait to find out who will be the final undefeated team to come out of the Astralis vs NRG matchup set for today.

Despite looking a bit shakier than in their championship run at Bounty, and against significantly worse opposition in still AWP-less HEROIC, and Aurora, Jame’s boys continued to put on a strong performance.

Aurora took revenge on GamerLegion as they schooled Snax’s team in a comfortable 2-0 victory with an unusually weak performance out of PR, only finding eight frags in total, in what is no doubt his worst professional series thus far.

NIP, FUT, and paiN didn’t get off to the best start in the competition, with their opening losses to Liquid, 3DMAX, and Astralis, but still managed to come back in the lower bracket. Passion UA put up a good fight against NIP, losing 2-1, but in the end, Grim was barking up the wrong tree.

Legacy and B8 got sent home without wins, and we can’t say we were surprised by either.

B8’s new supposed AWP-wonderkid, segukawa, made his debut for the team in a 2-1 loss to NRG and an elimination loss against paiN, this time in a close 2-0 affair. Our eyes can’t help but wander towards the 0.54 rated 16-year-old at the bottom of the scoreboard and wonder if a few more frags would have made the difference.

Well, at least it can only go up from here.

Legacy have been on a steady downtrend ever since their crash at the Budapest Major, and Kraków was just another nail in their coffin. They left Kraków without a single map win, despite leading 11-2 on Overpass against BC.Game, before getting run over on Inferno.

You know you’re f-cking doomed when you’re getting trashed by a f-cking crypto casino.

While on the topic, one of the teams we were very curious to see the real debut of was BC.Game. And with their win against Legacy, followed by a complete destruction at the hands of 3DMAX, we were left with more questions than answers. Are BC.Game that terrible, or are Legacy even worse? We think it’s the latter. And no, we can’t admit that the French are good.

Yesterday ended with an outright banger of a series, as G2 and Liquid squared up over a spot in the tournament’s second stage. A thrilling third map of Anubis would decide the series, where ultimate and malbsMd battled it out over 30 rounds of play, culminating in a slim G2 victory.

Yes, you read that right – “Roland from Poland” was a god on the server last night. We’ve only just moved out of Katowice, and already everything feels so wrong.

The action of stage one is set to finish today, as only five spots in the next stage of the tournament remain. s1mple’s hopes of extending his return to tier one play hinge on a series against Snappi’s NIP, while two teams will be faced with the endurance task of playing two best-of-threes in the same day with elimination on the line.