Team Falcons has become the PGL Bucharest 2025 champions after beating G2 Esports in yesterday’s Grand Final.
With this victory, the Saudi Arabian esports organisation has secured its biggest Counter-Strike trophy so far, and the lion’s share of the event’s $625,000 (~£493,156) prize pool.
PGL Bucharest 2025 was the tournament organiser’s second international Counter-Strike event of the year. From April 6th-13th, the competition saw 16 teams battle through a Swiss System Group Stage and the single-elimination Playoffs.
Both Team Falcons and G2 Esports were directly invited to the tournament. However, the two teams had very different journeys throughout the event. G2 Esports’s run kicked off with a dominant 3-0 score in the Group Stage, while Falcons was among the bottom three teams to make the playoffs after winning three out of five matches.
Still, Falcons went on an undefeated Playoffs run. The team first eliminated GamerLegion (2-1) and FaZe Clan (2-1) to finally take down G2 in a dominant fashion.
According to esports data platform Esports Charts, 518,849 tuned into the Grand Final. This makes PGL Bucharest the sixth-most popular Counter-Strike tournament in 2025 so far, slightly below PGL Cluj-Napoca with 539,700 peak viewers. At the top of the list is IEM Katowice, with nearly 1.3m peak viewers.
The End of G2 m0NESY
PGL Bucharest also marks the last competition for player Ilya ‘m0NESY’ Osipov under the G2 banner. Yesterday, G2’s CEO, Alban ‘Stilgar’ Dechelotte, confirmed that m0NESY will transfer to Team Falcons. The Russian prodigy has been competing for G2 throughout his entire tier-one career thus far, winning numerous IEM and BLAST titles.
The AWPer will now reunite with his former teammate Nikola ‘NiKo’ Kovač, who was already part of the Falcons roster during PGL Bucharest. The two players will represent Falcons at the upcoming IEM Melbourne from April 21st-27th.
