FURIA are the champions of IEM Chengdu 2025 following a 3-0 sweep in the best-of-five grand finals over Vitality on November 9th.
This is a statement victory for FURIA, as they’ve won their biggest title ever against a powerful Vitality. Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and co. are the undisputed best CS2 team of 2025, and had never lost a BO5 by 3-0 before.
Molodoy has all the makings of a legendary player. Credit: © ESL
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FURIA started the series strong, having claimed a hard-fought 13-11 victory on Ancient, a map that neither they nor Vitality play much. The Brazilians followed it up, as a dominant T-side won them Inferno (13-10).
Despite all the pressure, Vitality played very well on Overpass and nearly won it. Still, FURIA broke their economy at the very end, and closed out the series with another 13-11 victory.
Everyone on FURIA had their moments in the grand finals, but Danil “molodoy” Golubenko once again led the show. The Kazakh dropped 61 kills and was as reliable as ever with the AWP, even though he faced Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. Molodoy averaged a 1.27 rating throughout the tournament, the fourth highest, and was named the MVP.
This 3-0 win over Vitality cemented FURIA as one of the biggest favorites to win the StarLadder Budapest Major, the second Valve-sponsored event of the year and the final tier-one LAN of 2025.
The Brazilians had already won FISSURE Playground 2 and the Thunderpick World Championship, but IEM Chengdu featured all the best CS2 teams in the world.
FURIA’s captain Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo shared his thoughts about overcoming Vitality, who had knocked FURIA out of ESL Pro League Season 22 in October, and why FURIA picked Ancient.
I’m so proud of my team, it was a very difficult matchup. Vitality is the big boss, but today they fall.
Both of us don’t really play Ancient that much, but yeah, you need big balls sometimes and we showed that.
| Placing | Team | Prize earned |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | FURIA | $285,000 + 1 ESL Grand Slam Season 6 point |
| 2nd | Vitality | $150,000 |
| 3rd | Falcons | $120,000 |
| 4th | MOUZ | $90,000 |
| 5th-6th | The MongolZ and Astralis | $72,500 (each) |
| 7th-8th | Team Spirit and G2 | $47,000 (each) |
| 9th-12th | paiN Gaming, HEROIC, Lynn Vision, and Virtus.pro | $25,000 (each) |
| 13th-16th | FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, TYLOO, and 3DMAX | $4,000 (each) |
Feature image credit: © ESL
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