eChampions League 26: the Budapest Final 8 and how it was won

Two goals up, pegged back to 2-2 with less than twenty minutes to play, then in front again within minutes: that is how the grand final of the eChampions League 26 was decided in Budapest. Vejrgang beat HHezerS 3-2 to take the title, according to the review of the finals that EA Sports published on its FC Pro pages on May 28, 2026.

The eChampions League is the club competition of EA Sports FC, the soccer video game, played one against one by professionals who each carry the colors of a real club. FC Pro is the name EA gives to its competitive circuit. This season's edition started with 36 players and ended with eight of them in the Hungarian capital for a straight knockout that EA calls the Final 8. Seven matches were played there, and five of the seven were settled by a single goal or by two.

A final won, lost and won again

EA's account of the grand final has three movements. Vejrgang scored first, then doubled his lead from a free kick. HHezerS, an Italian player who represents Hellas Verona, pulled one back in the 54th minute and equalized in the 71st. Vejrgang went back in front a few minutes later and held on.

The review counts goals by the minute of the match clock, as a soccer report would. The final was the lowest-scoring match of the three rounds in Budapest: five goals, when every other match there produced at least seven.

The publisher adds two pieces of context. Vejrgang, whom it describes as the world number one, becomes the seventh FC Pro player to win the eChampions League; the review names Emre Yilmaz, Jonny and nicolas99fc among those before him. And both finalists had been here before without winning. Each had lost an earlier eChampions League final to Emre Yilmaz, and EA dates the one HHezerS lost to 2023.

After the match the champion was interviewed by Bastian Schweinsteiger. EA reports the exchange without quoting it: Vejrgang said he had not played at his best, and that he was glad to have won when it counted.

Seven matches in Budapest

The Final 8 is a single-elimination bracket. Eight players, four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and a final, with no second chance for the loser. The review lists every score.

The quarter-finals set the tone. Samugamer, who plays for Sassuolo and had gone out at this stage a season earlier, led MarwanMC9 of Monaco 3-2 at half-time and pulled away to 9-3. Alihanlion of Leipzig met Nassada of Freiburg in a rematch of the final of the Virtual Bundesliga, the German league of the game, which Nassada had won. This time Alihanlion led 5-1 after 37 minutes and closed it out 6-4, Nassada's last goal arriving in the 85th minute.

HHezerS had the most even match of the four on paper. He led DFernandes of Cadiz 2-0 inside a quarter of an hour, was caught at 2-2 by the 34th minute, went ahead again just before the break, was caught a second time, and then scored twice more to win 5-3.

The champion's road: three wins by one goal

Vejrgang, who plays under the colors of Como, did not win a single match in Budapest by more than one goal.

In the quarter-final he faced nicolas99fc of Real Sociedad, a former winner of the competition. Vejrgang opened the scoring in the 10th minute and trailed 4-3 at half-time. He drew level at 4-4, led in the 66th minute, was caught again in the 74th and scored the goal that made it 6-5.

The semi-final followed the same script against Samugamer, whom he had beaten 4-1 in the quarter-finals of the previous season. Samugamer led 2-0 early; Vejrgang was 3-2 up at half-time; Samugamer was back in front, 4-3, in the 53rd minute. Vejrgang equalized at 5-5 in the 80th minute and scored the winner with about three minutes left, after a through ball that EA's review singles out.

Added together, his three matches in Budapest read 15 goals scored and 12 conceded. HHezerS reached the final by a calmer route, 5-3 and then 6-1 against Alihanlion, who had scored first in the third minute of their semi-final before conceding six, the last three in the 76th, 81st and 85th minutes.

From 36 players to eight

The Budapest bracket was the last step of a longer competition, and EA described the earlier ones in a review published on May 20. The eChampions League 26 brought together 36 FC Pro players from 17 domestic leagues, in what the publisher describes as a format in the style of the UEFA Champions League, the club competition of European soccer.

The arithmetic is simple: eight direct qualifiers, 16 players in the play-off round and 12 eliminated make 36. EA's preview of the finals, dated May 25, places those earlier phases in Manchester.

The league phase had its own headlines. Emre Yilmaz, the defending champion, was the only player to win all six of his matches, scoring 34 goals. Leks of Benfica beat Vejrgang 7-5 in the world number one's opening match. Levi de Weerd beat Dan1K 17-1, which EA calls the biggest winning margin in the history of the competition. The eight players who qualified directly were Leks, Nassada, nicolas99fc, Vejrgang, Alihanlion, DFernandes, MarwanMC9 and Emre Yilmaz.

Vejrgang's place among them was not a formality. According to the preview, he lost that opener, drew his second match against Levi de Weerd, then won the remaining four to finish fifth. Nassada finished third and was the top scorer of the league phase with 51 goals; nicolas99fc was fourth, unbeaten, with four wins and two draws for 14 points; Alihanlion was sixth with 13 points and MarwanMC9 eighth, with three wins and three draws. DFernandes also came through without a defeat, on four wins and two draws.

The May 20 review gives a sense of how open the six rounds were. The very first match set Emre Yilmaz against ManuBachoore, his teammate at Team Liquid, and ended 4-3. Alihanlion beat Rafa Monteiro 13-2, DFernandes beat Dan1K 12-1 and Vejrgang, after his slow start, won 7-2 against Montaxer and 12-2 against Bero. At the other end of the table, Tuga810 drew 3-3 with Levi de Weerd in his last match and took 23rd place, one of the last two tickets to the play-off. Tekkz lost on the final day and still advanced, to a play-off against NiKSNEB, his teammate at Leeds United, which he won 5-3.

Two finalists from the lower half

Six of the eight players in Budapest had come through the top eight of the league phase. The other two had to play an extra round, and both knocked out a direct qualifier on the way.

Samugamer finished 16th in the table with 10 points, from three wins, a draw and two defeats. He beat Jafonso, the champion of the ePremier League, 4-3 after extra time in the play-off, then ended Emre Yilmaz's title defense with a 5-4 win in the round of 16. It was the champion's first defeat of the tournament.

HHezerS started from further back still. He finished 18th, with the same record of three wins, a draw and two defeats, and lost 6-5 to PHzin in the last round of the league phase. He then beat Karimisbak 6-3 in the play-off and came from behind to beat Leks 3-2 in the round of 16. Leks was the player who had beaten Vejrgang on the opening day.

So the grand final set the fifth-placed player of the league phase against the 18th. Counting the play-off, HHezerS played five knockout matches to Vejrgang's four, and scored 22 goals in them, against 23 for the champion, shoot-out excluded.

Close matches all the way down

The one-goal margins of Budapest were not new. The rounds played before the finals were full of them, by EA's own account.

In the play-off round, three of the six ties detailed in the May 20 review went to extra time, and a fourth went further: GugaFerraz and Bonanno drew 10-10 before GugaFerraz won 6-5 on penalties. PHzin beat Levi de Weerd 6-5 after extra time, with the winner scored by the final kick, and LuukWijdeveld beat SmalkXVII 5-4, also after extra time.

The round of 16 was tighter still. Five of its eight matches were decided by one goal or by penalties: Samugamer's 5-4, MarwanMC9's 5-4 over ManuBachoore in a rematch of the final of France's eLigue 1, HHezerS's 3-2, the 6-5 that DFernandes won with an added-time goal after trailing Maxkoelemaij 3-0, and the 8-8 between Vejrgang and Tekkz.

The two players who met in the final had each been through one of them. Vejrgang survived the shoot-out against Tekkz; HHezerS came back against Leks. EA's preview of the finals also recorded that DFernandes equalized early in the second half of his round of 16 tie before winning it with the last kick, and that Alihanlion and Nassada won 5-1 and 5-2 in that round, two of its three widest margins with the 7-3 of nicolas99fc. The two German-league rivals then met each other in the quarter-finals.

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