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One day, two titles

A fan's note

Shanghai and Paris keep different hours, and on most days that means nothing. On the twenty-third of August it meant this: two stages, two best-of-five grand finals, one organisation — and both series ended the same way.

There is not much left to analyse; it is all in the tables by now. I am writing it down while I still remember how it went.

Two weeks, three trophies

  1. A third Aegis of Champions

    Dota 2The International 2026Shanghai, Oriental Sports Center

    Team Spirit32TEAM VISION

    A regional rival pushed the series to a fifth map, but the last game stayed with Spirit.

    Series
    Bo5
    Roster
    Yatoro · Larl · Collapse · rue · not_me
    Coach
    Miposhka
    Source

  2. The Esports World Cup trophy

    CS2Esports World Cup 2026Paris

    Team Spirit31FUT Esports

    FUT took the opening map; the next three all went to Spirit.

    Series
    Bo5
    Roster
    donk · sh1ro · magixx · zont1x · tN1R
    Coach
    hally
    Source

  3. +14 days

    The BLAST Open Porto trophy

    CS2BLAST Open Porto 2026Porto, Super Bock Arena

    Team Spirit31MOUZ

    A rematch of the BLAST Bounty final a month earlier — this time the trophy stayed with Spirit.

    Series
    Bo5
    Roster
    donk · sh1ro · magixx · zont1x · tN1R
    Coach
    hally
    Source

How the day went

  1. 01

    Shanghai

    The International grand final reaches a fifth map: the series is level and the last game decides it.

  2. 02

    Shanghai

    Spirit take game five. The Aegis goes to them for a third time — nobody had collected three before.

  3. 03

    Paris

    The same day, the CS2 grand final at the Esports World Cup. FUT take the opening map, and the arena starts to believe this will be hard.

  4. 04

    Paris

    Spirit do not drop another map. A second trophy inside the same day.

One more thing about Shanghai

This is the city's second time. In December 2024 Spirit took the CS2 crown right here — the Major; donk ended that final as the youngest Major MVP in the game's history.

No other city has handed them two crown trophies: Bucharest and Seattle gave one Aegis each, Shanghai gave a Major and the third.

CS2Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024Team Spirit 21 FaZe Clan

Source

What the records say now

  1. 01

    Team Spirit are the first organisation to win The International three times.

  2. 02

    Yatoro and Collapse are the first three-time TI champions; it took them six tournaments.

  3. 03

    Miposhka took a third title — two as a player, this one as a coach.

  4. 04

    Larl became a two-time champion of The International.

  5. 05

    Both wins landed on the same calendar day.

Personal

I have supported them long enough to know it is never calm: a fifth map, a dropped opener, a scoreline that stays level until the very end. Today it happened twice in a row, in two different games, on two different continents.

Days like this usually leave one line in a record list. I wanted to keep something else as well — so here is this page.

P.S. Two weeks later

The CS2 roster did not stop at Paris. Two weeks later came BLAST Open Porto: the groups in Copenhagen, the playoffs at the Super Bock Arena — and one more trophy.

The final was against MOUZ, the team that had beaten them in the BLAST Bounty final at the start of August. This time it went the other way: Dust2 13:8, Mirage lost 11:13, then Ancient 13:3 and Nuke 13:6.

Across the whole event Spirit did not lose a single series and dropped only that one map. donk was named MVP — for the second tournament running.