Vitality Wins StarLadder StarSeries Fall 2026, Beats Aurora in Grand Final
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20.09.2026 23:35
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2 min read
Team Vitality is the StarLadder StarSeries Fall 2026 champion in Counter-Strike 2. In the tournament’s deciding match in Barcelona, the team beat Aurora 3:1 to claim its first trophy in more than four months.
Vitality opened the final with a dominant win on Anubis, 13:4. Aurora answered on Inferno, taking the map 13:11, but after that the French organization seized full control. Mirage ended 13:4, and Cache finished 13:7.
The win avenged the teams’ meeting in the upper-bracket final. A day earlier, Aurora had beaten Vitality 2:1, winning Anubis and Nuke to advance straight to the grand final.
Vitality had to take the longer road. Before the deciding match, the team played the lower-bracket final against FURIA and won 2:0 – 13:5 on Cache and 13:8 on Anubis. All told, Vitality’s roster played six maps in a single game day.
ZywOo Named Tournament’s Best Player
The champions’ biggest star was once again Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. The Frenchman finished StarSeries Fall 2026 with an average rating of 1.50 across 13 maps, and posted a 1.51 rating in the grand final against Aurora.
ZywOo also took home the tournament MVP award. The sniper was especially sharp against FURIA before the final, closing out the series with a 1.88 rating and a 42–16 record.
StarLadder StarSeries Fall 2026 ran in Barcelona from September 17 to 20 and featured eight teams. The total prize pool was $500,000, split evenly between player payouts and club shares.
For first place, Vitality received $100,000 as part of the player payout, with another $100,000 going to the club share. Aurora finished second and FURIA third.
Vitality’s First Title Since May
Before this, Vitality’s most recent trophy was BLAST Rivals 2026 Season 1, which ended on May 3. The team also won that tournament without dropping the grand final, sweeping NAVI 3:0.
The Barcelona win thus ended a more than four-month title drought for Vitality. The road to the trophy was also far harder than usual: after losing to Aurora, the team had to get past FURIA and then take revenge in the final, all in one day.
