Just one top-10 team in Malta: Bounty devours the favorites and leaves the year's most open LAN
The eight are set. The online stage of BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 2 closed on Sunday, leaving a Malta LAN field nobody would have predicted two weeks ago: of the world's ten best teams, only Spirit survived. The rest of the bracket is made up of sides arriving with freshly assembled projects, young rosters, or an urgent need for VRS points.
The eight qualified teams are Spirit, MOUZ, FaZe, The MongolZ, Liquid, Astralis, paiN, and 3DMAX, and they'll face off from July 30 to August 2 at BLAST's studios in Malta.
The online stage massacre
The Bounty format rewards boldness — lower-seeded teams choose which favorite they want to face — and this edition took that premise to the extreme. The casualty list is striking:
Falcons, Cologne Major champions and world number two, went home in their first match after a 1-2 loss to 100 Thieves. Vitality were swept 0-2 by the new-look Liquid. FURIA fell 1-2 to DENDELE, the freshly renamed Brazilian side. And the second round added kyxsan's rebuilt Aurora, eliminated by FOKUS, and G2, knocked out by Liquid.
After that cull, MOUZ stand as the tournament's second-highest ranked team — and they're eleventh in the world. The gap between the Malta field and what was expected at the tournament's start is enormous.
Who the eight in Malta are
Spirit arrive as the elite's only representative, backed by the tournament's most brutal performance: a 13-0 against 100 Thieves on the deciding Dust2, with donk posting a colossal 2.84 rating.
MOUZ debut their rebuild featuring PR, the former academy player brought back from GamerLegion, and their 2-0 over FOKUS makes them the second favorite on paper.
Liquid are probably the most talked-about team here. Johnny "JT" Theodosiou's debut as in-game leader, alongside AWPer Jorko, has produced two heavyweight 2-0s: first over world number one Vitality, then over G2. It's hard to imagine a better start for an era that began amid doubts.
FaZe head to the LAN with a specific motivation: banking the VRS points they need after missing the Cologne Major. They beat DENDELE 2-1 in their opener.
The MongolZ made it through despite rebuilding half their roster, and their qualification carries a bonus: young guns tikuak and DarkMeister will experience their first top-tier LAN.
Astralis travel with Filip "NEO" Kubski making his debut as head coach after replacing ruggah, and with Poland's Urszula "Xirreth" Klimczak added as performance coach. They had to grind: it took all three maps to beat HOTU.
paiN eliminated Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-0 and 3DMAX did the same to xfl0ud's new FUT, completing the field.
The draft's irony
The second-round draft produced a moment that aged poorly. HOTU, when picking their opponent, openly admitted Astralis weren't their first choice — they'd have preferred The MongolZ, already paired off — and described the Danes as a team not in good shape. Astralis beat them and took the Malta ticket.
FOKUS were sharper, picking MOUZ after already eliminating ash and GamerLegion, their former teammates, in a personal checklist of ztr's. That's where they hit the wall.
A tournament blown wide open
The competitive read is obvious: without four of the world's top five, Malta becomes the summer's juiciest opportunity. For Liquid, to confirm their new project is real. For The MongolZ, to prove their youth gamble wasn't reckless. For FaZe, to get back into the Singapore Major race. And for Spirit, the pressure of being the only giant left standing.
The next step comes fast: BLAST holds its live quarter-final draft show this Wednesday at 20:00 CEST from its Malta studio, where the lower seeds will again pick their opponents. Then four days of LAN to decide who takes the fall season's first big title.
Source: HLTV, Hotspawn, BLAST.