Team Vitality, Team Falcons advance to BLAST Rivals Spring 2025 semifinals

The grand finalists of IEM Melbourne 2025 may soon find themselves in a rematch at the grand finals of BLAST Rivals Spring 2025.

Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) esports action continues into May with BLAST Rivals Spring 2025, where eight world class teams are fighting over the lion's share of US$125,000 out of the tournament's US$350,000 prize pool. Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Melbourne 2025 grand finalists Team Vitality and Team Falcons led the pack of six teams that qualified for the BLAST Rivals Spring Playoffs with the conclusion of the tournament's Group Stage on Friday (2 May).

Vitality and Falcons will start the BLAST Rivals Spring Playoffs in the semifinals after topping their respective groups in the GSL format Group Stage. Team Spirit, Wildcard Gaming, MOUZ, and FaZe Clan also qualified for the Playoffs, but will start in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, paiN Gaming and FlyQuest failed to make it out of the Group Stage and have been eliminated.

Here's how all the action in the BLAST Rivals Spring 2025 Group Stage went down:

Vitality, Falcons advance to BLAST Rivals Spring 2025 semifinals

Fresh off of winning IEM Melbourne 2025 and the ESL Grand Slam Season 5, Vitality continued its roll by topping Group A with victories over Wildcard and MOUZ.

Vitality started their Group Stage campaign by sweeping Wildcard, 2-0, in Inferno (13-7), and Dust II (13-6) in their Opening Match of Group A. That then set the French juggernaut for another showdown with rivals MOUZ, who were coming off a 2-1 victory over paiN with wins at Nuke (13-9) and Dust II (13-0).

Having faced Vitality twice in the grand finals of tournaments so far this year, MOUZ were very familiar with the world's top-ranked team by now and opened this latest match with a 13-9 win in Mirage. However, Vitality were quick to bounce back and won Inferno (13-9) and Train (13-8) to secure the 2-1 reverse sweep and a semifinals berth in the Playoffs.

With their two match victories in the tournament so far, Vitality extended their historic match win streak to 23 consecutive victories, which now puts them in a tie with the 2021 Team Liquid squad for the second-longest match win streak in the history of CS. With how dominant Vitality are looking right now, it should be safe to say they'll be the sole owners of that record come the Playoffs.

The other IEM Melbourne grand finalist, Falcons, topped Group B to continue staking their claim as the biggest contender behind Vitality. Falcons faced a struggling FaZe squad in their Opening Match, sweeping the series 2-0 with wins at Dust II (13-6) and Ancient (13-10). That then pit Falcons in the Group B Winners Match against a formidable opponent in Spirit, who also swept their Opening Match against FlyQuest with wins at Mirage (13-2) and Nuke (13-9).

Spirit were in the driver's seat to start the series, as they trounced Falcons on their map pick of Mirage with a 13-4 score. Falcons then recovered in game two at Ancient, soundly sweeping Spirit in the second half to take the 13-6 win and force the series to a decider. Game three at Dust II then saw Falcons come back from being down 5-10 by forcing overtime and winning four straight rounds there to secure the 2-1 reverse sweep with an impressive 16-12 win.

Meanwhile, Wildcard and FaZe secured the final Playoff spots by sweeping paiN and FlyQuest, respectively, in their group's Elimination Matches. Wildcard bulldozed through paiN in Inferno (13-10) and Anubis (13-5), while FaZe had to overcome a scrappy FlyQuest in Inferno (13-10) and Nuke (22-18).

The BLAST Rivals Spring 2025 Playoffs will run until Sunday (4 May) and feature best-of-three matches in the quarterfinals and semifinals, while the grand finals will be a full best-of-five series. Here are the opening matchups for the Playoffs:

Quarterfinals: