And, exhale.

EWC has officially concluded and the comical? disaster of tying for last place has been diverted. While we did not manage to get a podium finish for a third year in a row; it was welcome to see that down the stretch enough points were scored to come in 5th place.

We got there on the backs of 4 teams.

• Rainbow 6 broke the 6 straight weeks of 0.

• Magnus, while sick, took home a back to back trophy.

• Crossfire and Trackmania (Epos) both finished the final week in 2nd place.

I feel like this placement will be forgotten by time, but the trauma will stay around and be a good learning moment for all of us as we plan for future EWC’s. The possibility of not being a top team really does feel against our ethos.

The TL;DR tl;dr

• 🏆♟️- Magnus wins (back to back) at EWC

• 🏆♟️- Pragg wins Grand Chess Tour Finals (against Fabi!)

• 🏆🎮- HBOX wins CEO 2026 Melee

• 🏆🖱️- DOTA wins 1Win Essance 2 [But finished 6th at TI 😬]

Apex - ALGS Split 2 America is ongoing with the team currently sitting just outside the top 10 and looking for a September playoff birth.

Chess - Many events! We have, now twice, mentioned Magnus winning at EWC. Twice, just like his back to back wins. But also Pragg won both the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz, AND, the Grand Chess Tour FInals. Fabi finished second in those same Tour Finals.

Crossfire - The boys from Brazil took home two silver medals. Regionally in the CBL Season 2 (losing to ROC) and at EWC (losing to BaiSha). They had a bit of a lucky bracket not facing any Chinese juggernaut teams, but that does not for a second take away from their impressive wins against regional and SEA opponents.

CS2 - Stake Pulse Beat 1, a little offline event in Sweden, saw the team take home 2nd place. The EWC LCQ was less kind to them; as they failed to qualify for the main event after losing out to 1W.

DOTA - TI Happened in August. The team finished 6th, which is respectable, but the very successful 4-1 group stage performance set expectations higher. An upper bracker heartbreaker to Yandex (losing with mega creeps) into a lower bracket competitive series with Falcons, before eventually losing 0-2 to eventually event winners Spirit. They also did win 1win Essence 2, but that feels moot in comparison?

LoL - The Summer Split is well underway, with the team sitting at 4-1. That loss comes to LYON in Mexico City. The only real blemish on their record and setting up what looks to be an exciting Finals in Atlanta.

Marvel Rivals - Mid season Finals wrapped up with a 2nd place finish, losing to NaVi. NaVi came out of the EMEA region as the first seed. Liquid Citadel lost to them in both the Upper Bracket, and Grand Finals.

MLBB - PH and ID season 18 are well under way. The PH team is currently 3-1. ID is sitting at 5-1.

R6 - Losing out to regional rivals Faze in the quarter finals was a bummer. But the R6 team were the first one’s all summer to put EWC points on the board for TL. The start of a comeback.

Smash - CEO 2026 saw HBOX take Cody Schwab on in the Upper Finals. Where HBOX won. THEN Cody came back through losers. THEN Cody caused a bracket reset. But HBOX Clutch-BOX’d and won the final set to take home another CEO belt and Smash trophy.

SC2 - My tracker shows… 33 events that were played between Clem and Cure. They each won a few weeklies!

Trackmania - Both Otaaaq and Epos preformed quite well at the event. Otaaaq made the semi finals, with a top 8 finish. But Epos drove on to the final match, finishing 2nd!

Valorant - In Europe, the boys made a quite impressive lower bracket run. After losing to FUT in Round 1, they passed through Eintracht, Enterprise, Fire Flux, and then revenge on FUT to ultimately face up (and lose) to KCorp in the finals. The dope part here is that the 2nd place finish (and the points) qualified the team for Champions in Shanghai!

Shifting to Brazil, the Game Changers final stage playoffs is underway with TL BR in the Upper Bracket Final. They face off against MiBR; with the eventual event winners being the sole BR team to qualify to Game Changers CHamps.

We’re now firmly in the middle of another Race to World First. We call this one #9 internally, and it is the first one that the production team has done internally without an external production company. Super proud of them. It’s midnight and I’m writing this from the production line. Hopefuly in a few days we will be packing up the equiptment after another party and a 5th-in-a-row.

As always, I would love to discuss this newsletter on /r/teamliquid - or you can email me at [email protected]

• Joey