Who would’ve thought it would take a group of Russians flying to America to finally slay the French?

In an otherwise fairly uneventful Group A at IEM Atlanta 2026, that was the headline. If you’d told anyone before the tournament that Vitality would lose a series, BetBoom would’ve been near the bottom of the list of likely candidates - and yet, here we are.

Seriously, someone get FL4MUS and Magnojez on a proper tier one roster already. Anything but VP, please.

BC.Game and FaZe were also teams to keep an eye on in this group, and while FaZe showed some signs of life, BC.Game was just… BC.Game. Not even Senzu could save that team from looking completely hopeless. Someone should probably tell s1mple that immediately torching your teammates on social media doesn’t really help either.

On the other side of things, alongside BetBoom, paiN were one of the pleasant surprises of the stage. With saffee standing in, they still managed to take down FaZe and FUT on their way to the Playoffs, largely thanks to big step-ups from snow and piriajr.

Over in the significantly less stacked Group B, outside of the almost guaranteed Playoffs berth for NAVI, the remaining two spots were up for grabs - and Legacy had no intention of letting it slip away. After comfortable wins over M80 and Astralis, Legacy even upset NAVI in the seeding match to secure a semis berth. What can we say… unc’s still got it.

In the final match of the group stage, Astralis faced GamerLegion for the last spot in the arena. Pretty balanced matchup, right? Well, GamerLegion simply steamrolled them in a very painful watch for any Astralis fan. Hell, even we were embarrassed.

Speaking of disappointment, we expected a lot more from M80. They couldn’t even get past Liquid in the lower bracket, with the Lake-JBa duo looking completely lost throughout. Not even Liquid…

With the group stage wrapped up, the teams heading to the Georgia World Congress Center this weekend are BetBoom, paiN, Vitality, Legacy, NAVI, and GamerLegion.