Images: ESL
The MongolZ and Team Spirit will now face Team Vitality and Natus Vincere for two spots in the grand finals.
The main event of the Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice 2025 at the iconic Spodek Arena kicked off on Friday (7 February), with 
The MongolZ and Shanghai Major champions 
Team Spirit sweeping 
Eternal Fire and 
Virtus.pro (VP) to advance to the tournament's semifinals.
With their victories, MongolZ and Spirit secured at least a 3rd-4th place finish in IEM Katowice 2025, as well as $80,000 in winnings. They will next face off against 
Team Vitality and 
Natus Vincere, respectively, for the two spots in the grand finals. Spirit will notably be gunning to become IEM Katowice champions in back-to-back years.
Meanwhile, Eternal Fire and VP end their run in the tournament in 5th-6th place and will take home $40,000 in consolation. Here's how all the action in the opening day of IEM Katowice 2025's main event went down:
MongolZ, Spirit advance to IEM Katowice 2025 semis
2-0
Eternal FireThe first arena match at Spodek this year saw the MongolZ, the youngest team in the tournament, take down an Eternal Fire squad fresh off a second place finish at BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 in two maps.
Map one in Anubis started with the MongolZ winning the first three rounds as the T side, before finishing the first half up 8-4. While Eternal Fire won the pistol round plus conversion to start the second half, they would only manage one more round win before the MongolZ closed out Anubis with a comfortable 13-7 win.
Garidmagnai “bLitz” Byambasuren led the way for the MongolZ in Anubis with 20 frags and three assists on 10 deaths while Usukhbayar “910” Banzgrach added 19 frags and three assists on a map-best eight deaths.
Game two in Mirage looked to be another easy win for the MongolZ, as they finished the first half with another 8-4 lead as the T side before going up 10-4 to start the second half. However, 
Can “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş finally woke up and started clicking heads to spark an 8-1 run for Eternal Fire that put them just one round away from forcing a decider. The MongolZ then won round 24 to force overtime.
Both squads then went round-for-round in overtime, though no separation was found between the two after 36 rounds, resulting in a second overtime period. The MongolZ seemed to have weathered the exhaustion of this map much better than Eternal Fire, as they racked up four straight rounds to finally close out the 2-0 series sweep with a hard-fought 22-18 Mirage win.
Sodbayar “Techno4k” Munkhbold shone the brightest in a MongolZ squad that were firing on all cylinders to close out the series, finishing with a series-best 36 frags and six assists on 28 deaths. BLitz also had an excellent map, recording 29 frags and 11 assists on a map-best 18 deaths. Meanwhile, XANTARES put up a valiant 30 frags and eight assists on 25 deaths for Eternal Fire in the loss.
0-2
Team SpiritThe second series of the day then saw reigning Major champions Spirit make quick work of an already-outmatched VP squad, who were also forced to play with 
Nikolay “mir” Bityukov as a stand-in for Timur “FL4MUS” Maryev, who could no longer play in the main event due to visa issues.
VP looked to even their odds against Spirit by surprise picking Train for the opening game of the series, though this gambit proved to be largely ineffective. Spirit utterly dominated the first half as the CT side, conceding just two rounds to VP en route to taking their opening win of the series with a lopsided 13-2 score.
Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov led the way for Spirit in Train with 18 frags and two assists on a map-best five deaths while Shanghai Major MVP Danil “Donk” Kryshkovets added 17 frags and four assists on 10 deaths.
VP put up a much better fight in map two at Ancient, with their stand-in mir leading the team's last stand in IEM Katowice. VP were actually leading 4-2 as the CT side after the first six rounds, but Spirit responded with a 5-1 run to close out the half and head into the side switch with a two-round cushion.
The second half saw mir lead VP as they traded rounds with Spirit, though they could only get to nine rounds scored before Spirit eventually secured their semifinals spot with the 13-9 closeout in Ancient. Boris “magixx” Vorobiev was the standout player for Spirit in game two with 21 frags and nine assists on 11 deaths while Donk added 20 frags and eight assists on 17 deaths.
