Vitality have been crowned champions of ESL Pro League Season 22 following a dominant 3-0 victory against Falcons in the grand finals.
It looked like Falcons had a fair chance this time around, as Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov started playing well again, but the Saudi-backed team didn’t show up at all, as per Nikola “NiKo” Kovač’s own words.
We were doing a lot of mistakes. Comms were off the whole game. If you don’t show up against Vitality this is the result.
Falcons only got to double digits on Inferno (13-10), and played worse in Train (13-9) and Dust 2 (13-5). This was the third final between Falcons and Vitality this year, and the former won all three.
This indisputable victory sees Vitality and co. return to winning ways after all the success in the first half of the year, which culminated in them lifting the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 trophy.
With ESL Pro League Season 22 in the bag, the quintet of Dan “apEX” Madesclaire, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, William “mezii” Merriman, Shahar “flameZ” Shushan, and Robin “ropz” Kool have won nine CS2 tournaments out of 14 tournaments played in 2025. They’re now just one away from matching what Astralis achieved in 2018.
And, of course, the captain apEX couldn’t be happier to end this four-month draught, if we can even say that after all that Vitality have done in the first six months.
We’ve been working hard and we really wanted to get back to trophies. It feels so good to be back with a trophy, I missed it.
As for the MVP, ZywOo was behind m0NESY in the pecking order for ESL Pro League Season 22’s MVP award, but he got it as a result of Vitality’s clean sweep.
The French superstar was Vitality’s best player throughout the tournament, helping them not only to beat Falcons, but also GamerLegion, HOTU, G2, FURIA, and FaZe Clan along the way. He averaged a 1.28 rating in 17 maps played, plus a +111 K/D difference, and an 88.9 ADR.
| Placing | Team | Prize earned |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Vitality | $250,000 |
| 2nd | Falcons | $125,000 |
| 3rd | MOUZ | $88,000 |
| 4th | FaZe Clan | $72,000 |
| 5th-8th | Spirit, FURIA, Natus Vincere, 3DMAX | $58,000 (each) |
| 9th-11th | Aurora, G2, The MongolZ | $38,500 (each) |
| 12th-14th | Gentle Mates, HOTU, Inner Circle | $20,500 (each) |
| 15th-16th | Astralis, GamerLegion | $8,500 |
| 17th-19th | B8, ENCE, Legacy | $6,500 |
| 20th-22nd | Fluxo, HEROIC, M80 | $4,500 |
| 23rd-24th | NRG, Rooster | $3,000 |
Feature image credit: Helena Kristiansson | © ESL
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