Our favourite time in the Counter-Strike calendar is here.

PGL is back on the menu, which means hour-long tech pauses, sound issues, and the occasional piece of 20th-century surrealist art for us to admire.

But it’s not all blown-out eardrums and glitched screens.

Cluj-Napoca 2026 is the most stacked PGL event in recent memory, so if you’re willing to overlook the more obvious issues - hopefully ironed out after the opening days - you might actually end up having a great time with some tier one CS.

Running in the ever-reliable Swiss format, the tournament kicked off with the favourites handling business comfortably. FURIA, Falcons, NAVI, and FaZe all swept their opponents in B8, 3DMAX, Astralis, and HEROIC. Elsewhere, MOUZ, Vitality, and The MongolZ had to work a bit harder to edge out PARIVISION, G2, and paiN.

Jame’s boys continue to prove they’re a tough nut to crack, even against the very best opposition, while for G2, taking a map off Vitality feels like their current best-case scenario. As long as SunPaypal is on the payroll, consistent AWP impact is something they won’t find. If only they had one of the hottest AWP prospects in the scene under contract…

Day 1’s real headline, though, was FUT. Stepping into the empty spot left by Legacy, they took down Aurora 2-1 in a series that was far more one-sided than the scoreline suggests. Outside of their signature Anubis - which they scraped through in OT - the Turks barely looked competitive. With dziugss leading the charge, there’s no doubt the kids are shooting hard. Not sure that’s much of an excuse, though.

Day 2 saw MOUZ cruise into the 2-0 pool as they dismantled NAVI, with xertioN topping the scoreboard. We didn’t expect much from NAVI, but a little fight would’ve been nice.

The rest of the 1-0 games were a bit more entertaining, as all three maps were needed for Falcons, FURIA and Vitality to join MOUZ in the undefeated bunch after facing FaZe, FUT, and TheMongolZ.

PARI’s 2-1 win over G2 led the 0-1 bracket, but the real story was B8’s 16-year-old Ukrainian AWPer.

No, it’s not segukawa - he’s already been shipped back to the academy team after getting thrown to the wolves in Kraków. This is s1zzi we’re talking about, fresh from Spirit Academy, who looked strong across his first four maps, especially against HEROIC where he posted a 1.42 rating. A solid start, but let’s not forget what happened to his predecessor.

Heading into Day 3, along with an exciting FURIA vs Falcons clash, we’ve also got a potential banger in MOUZ vs Vitality. It’s in a studio, so MOUZ actually have a real shot at this.