2 New Esports & 4 New Trophies
Hey! You! If you got this in your email – Thank you. Truly.
Last month we asked, “Is a Team Liquid Newsletter a Good Idea?” While that question remains unanswered, an encouraging number of people indicated “Yep!” (or at least, maybe?!). About 100 (if we’re rounding up a bit) humans are getting this sent directly to their inbox! That reach is off the back of very, very little marketing or promotion to let people know that this exists!
So I am gonna commit to play this out for the full year and see where a newsletter can go. We’re gonna do a little more promotion. We’re gonna see how to push the format, formatting, and platform. Fun!
If you’re new here, welcome. We’re running a little experiment on if a newsletter is something worth doing, and you can read more about that experiment here in our January edition.
With the preamble properly-ambled, here is everything you need to know about Team Liquid from February.
Oh and it’s, like, a lot.
The TL;DR tl;dr
🏎️ TL has entered Trackmania! A new face, Epos, and a few new Liveries
🦸 In partnership with Citadel Gaming, TL has also entered Marvel Rivals!
♟️ Magnus Carlsen is the Freestyle Chess World Champion! His 21st world title
🏆 Team Liquid Dota are the Blast Slam VI Champions
🏆 Team Liquid Valorant Game Changers are Kickoff Brazil Champions
Full Athletics Breakdown:
APEX: We welcomed Panic to the roster to play alongside Zer0 and Sikezz for the 2026 season. Scrims have started and the players are streaming often!
Chess: Not to say the same thing again, but Magnus Carlsen won the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship. And he did so by beating teammate Fabiano Caruana in the grand finals. Oh and, silly me, Magnus ALSO won the Speed Chess Championship (2025), which is slightly confusingly named because it is currently 2026.
Dota: Ok so yes, we won Blast Slam. But did you know that this is also the first Dreamleague in OVER TWO YEARS where TL has made it out of the group stage and into the playoffs? That to me feels like the bigger W. They also broke Aurora’s 28-series win streak to make it to the top of their group in Stage 2. Undefeated at the top actually, with an 8-0 score and a likely qualification to EWC. Trophy, hopefully, pending here.
EA FC: In eLigue 1 (the French region) both Manu and Levi are looking great; currently the 1st seed in their group. The World Cup is already secured for both players, so right now they are playing for a seed into the eChampions League. Over in eDivisie (The Netherlands) both Chris and Emre qualified for the finals as the #1 and #2 seed. And me, as a Yankee, I am still trying to learn how EA FC esports works 😀.
League: TLAW finished 6th out of the 8 teams in the Swiss group stage at 2026 Lock-In (their season-opening shorter format tournament). We had to play an elimination tiebreaker against Dignitas, which we won, but that seeded us into the Lower Bracket Quarterfinals. Our first series against Disguised was a 3-0 victory. Lyon in the Lower Bracket Semifinals next.
Overwatch: The team has been bootcamping (and streaming!) from Korea—placing 4th at the OWCS pre-season bootcamp! We also welcomed two new friends, our off-tank Coluge AND Rakattack (as a co-streamer). Overwatch has seen 4x the players on Steam this month since Blizzard took the “2” out and laid out the 2026 roadmap!
Smash: Hungrybox finished 9-12th at Genesis X3. Which is his all-time lowest placement. Which I take no pride in writing. Sorry Juan.
StarCraft: Both Cure and Clem made it out of their groups in LiuLi Cup, but fell in the Quarterfinals (to Maru and Reynor respectively).
VALORANT: Ok so this one is a little nutty. Three teams would make it out of EMEA to qualify for Masters Santiago, the first LAN of the year. Last month, Team Liquid fell to Vitality and Fnatic. This means in order to qualify they would have to go on a 5-series, do-or-die, lower bracket run for the final seat at Masters. And that, my friends, is exactly what they did. On their way to that qualification: Revenge against Vitality and Fnatic. More specifically, 3-0 vs Fnatic :)
VALORANT Game Changers: Team Liquid Visa had to do this one from the lower bracket as they fell in the Semifinals. But the team went on a tear with a map score of 10-1 in their quest through the grand finals where they ultimately bested MIBR GC to hoist (yet another) regional trophy.
Demon Slayer, Slay
A second Team Liquid x Demon Slayer collection has arrived over at tl.gg/store.
Did you know that we actually have a fully dedicated IG for our apparel? The best place to keep up to date on just what is coming to the store is via @teamliquidapparel.
And finally, Race to World First will be kicking off on twitch.tv/teamliquid in late March!
All things considered, a pretty damn good month. Go us. Go you. Thanks for taking a lil time out of your day to keep up with us. Let’s chat on /r/teamliquid about what made you smile this month. Or, ya know, about what you would like to see from these newsletters. My inbox is also open via joey@teamliquid.com if ya wanna let me know what you think.