Tundra Esports has defeated Team Yandex to win ESL One Birmingham 2026, in a 3-1 thriller that saw Tundra comeback from a lackluster start to secure a statement-win over an equally dominant opponent.
Pushing their opponents to the limit in a late evening thriller at the bp Pulse Arena in Solihull, England, Tundra were bolstered by a home town team energetically supporting the UK’s best Dota 2 player, Matthew “Ari” Walker.
With an emphatically supportive crowd that made it clear their loyalty only went one way behind Tundra, the UK-based team made it count on home soil.
Image Credit: Jaxon.gg/Michael Hassall
Game one went disastrously for Tundra, as Yandex punished every move they made. Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko was unable to get to a point of viability with his Gyrocopter. Beyond this, 33, who had told us just a few days ago that he missed the Timbersaw’s double chakram, found himself at least twice in situations where the extra damage would have been perfect. With a dominant performance, Yandex pushed the series to 1-0.
Going into Game Two and initially it looked like more of the same with a very strong Yandex team controlling the action with a scary-looking Shadow Shaman from Martin “Saksa” Sazdov. But with Pure’s Monkey King coming on line and the unbanned Largo for Neta “33” Shapira causing havoc, Tundra were able to eek out a win.
With the momentum firmly in their favor heading into game three, Tundra drafted an unusual but dramatically effective composition. Geared around preventing Yandex from ever getting to late game, the Beastmaster mid and instantly roaming Tusk. Building a large lead early, thanks mainly to Ari’s rotations, Tundra stomped Yandex to bring it to a match point.
A lead secured, Tundra didn’t let their foot off Yandex’s throat. With another Tusk pick, a scary Lifestealer pick for Pure, and Yandex looking shook,
Image Credit: Jaxon.gg/Michael Hassall
One of the keys to victory for Tundra was the dominant play of Ari on his Tusk. But when Jaxon.gg spoke to Ari after the game, he revealed the hero wasn’t even in Ari’s hero pool until recently:
“It’s kind of funny because it’s actually like, I think I’m kind of known for years now that I cannot play Tusk. I actually haven’t been able to play it in any team I’ve been with before. And the team will ask me to play it and I’ll say, I can’t really do it, it never works when I play it. But then in the last couple of weeks I just decided I’ll get good at this hero. I played lots of pubs, watched lots of replays. I started feeling like I was good enough at it and then we just kept going through the drafts and we kept thinking like, well isn’t Tusk just the best pick here?”
It’s not often players get a chance to have the home team advantage, a crowd chanting your name, people cheering every time you’re on screen. We asked Ari how that felt and how it motivated him:
“The crowd was completely surreal. I cannot believe how much passion and how much noise they would make just all the time. I thought you know at some point they get tired they might like stop at any point now. It’s just relentless and it was incredible already motivating to me. I had everyone behind me. Everybody helped out.”
Finally we asked if Ari had ever imagined winning a LAN on English soil:
“I mean, it is incredible. It’s an incredible achievement. But to be honest, I also had a lot of self-belief the whole way. There were some points where I doubted myself, but for the most part, I felt like anything I really put my mind to and gave everything into doing, I could achieve. It’s crazy that it happened, but it also took a lot of self-belief to keep going the whole way and to make it to this point, I would say.”
Tundra Esports take home $250,000 in player prize, a $40,000 club reward, and 8,000 EPT points. And with just a short break, they’ll be back in action during the DreamLeague Season 29 qualifiers and PGL Wallachia Season 8.
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Featured Image Credit: Jaxon.gg/Michael Hassall
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