FaZe Vegas Win Call of Duty League Major 2 at DreamHack Birmingham

FaZe Vegas beat OpTic Texas 4-1 in the grand final of the Call of Duty League's second Major of the 2026 season on March 29, closing out the event at DreamHack Birmingham in the United Kingdom. The win is FaZe Vegas's first trophy in almost a year and came after the team had to fight back through the lower bracket to reach the final at all.

The $150,000 Major was the second of four scheduled for the Call of Duty League's Black Ops 7 season, following Paris Gentle Mates' win at the season's opening Major in Dallas. OpTic Texas, the top seed heading into the Playoffs, reached the grand final having dropped only one map across the entire bracket before running into FaZe.

Results reported by Dot Esports and Insider Gaming, DreamHack Birmingham, March 29, 2026.

A final built on five different maps

The grand final opened with FaZe Vegas taking the Hardpoint, before OpTic Texas leveled the series on Raid Search and Destroy. From there FaZe won three straight: Overload on Scar, Hardpoint on Exposure and the deciding Search and Destroy on Exposure, closing the series out 4-1 and denying OpTic a second Major title of the season.

That result continued a pattern from earlier in the year: Paris Gentle Mates had been one of the only teams to beat OpTic decisively in the months leading into Birmingham, and FaZe Vegas's win marked another instance of a team outside Dallas's runner-up finding a way past a roster that had otherwise looked close to untouchable through most of the bracket.

How FaZe reached the final at all

FaZe Vegas's path to the title ran through the lower bracket. The team opened the Playoffs with a reverse sweep of LA Thieves, then lost to Toronto KOI, sending FaZe down into the lower bracket before it had even reached the semifinals. FaZe regrouped from there, beating Toronto KOI in a rematch to advance, then sweeping Paris Gentle Mates 3-0 in the lower bracket final. Gentle Mates, as the Major 1 champion from Dallas, was no minor scalp: losing three straight maps to FaZe ended a tournament in which Paris had been expected to contend again.

That lower-bracket run meant FaZe had already won three series by the time OpTic Texas, which had beaten FaZe 3-1 in the upper bracket, arrived in the grand final off a single loss for the whole event. OpTic's only dropped series across the bracket came in that eventual decider.

What the win means for FaZe Vegas

The Birmingham title is FaZe Vegas's first trophy in nearly a year, a drought notable for an organization built around players with past world championship pedigree. The roster that lifted the Major 2 trophy also played in front of a smaller crowd than OpTic Texas drew at the venue, according to reporting from the event, making the result a win achieved without the hometown-style support that followed OpTic through the weekend.

OpTic Texas still finishes with points, not the trophy

OpTic Texas leaves Birmingham as the Major's runner-up, a result that keeps the team near the top of the season standings even without a second straight Major title. OpTic had entered the bracket as a heavy favorite after dropping only one map across the whole event before the grand final, a run that included wins inside the upper bracket before FaZe Vegas's late charge from the lower side turned the final around.

The result also extended a wider trend from the first half of the 2026 season: across the year's opening two Majors, OpTic Texas has now reached the grand final of both without winning either one, after Paris Gentle Mates beat the team 4-3 in Dallas and FaZe Vegas beat it 4-1 in Birmingham.

The season's shape so far

Major 2 was held under the Call of Duty League's four-Major 2026 structure, built around the Black Ops 7 title and running from December 2025 through the summer. The Qualifiers for Major 2 ran online across six weeks before the twelve-team field narrowed to the eight that traveled to Birmingham for the LAN Playoffs, with the bottom two online finishers eliminated before the event and the rest split between automatic Playoff places and a win-or-go-home Play-in round.

Two Majors into the season, three different organizations have now reached a grand final: Paris Gentle Mates, OpTic Texas, and now FaZe Vegas as a champion, with Toronto KOI and LA Thieves both factoring into Birmingham's bracket without reaching the final itself. That spread of results, rather than one team running away with the season early, has been one of the defining features of the Black Ops 7 campaign's first few months.

How the Qualifiers set the Birmingham field

Major 2's twelve-team Qualifiers ran online from February 13 to March 22, a six-week round robin that seeded the field heading into the Birmingham LAN. OpTic Texas topped that standings table with a 10-1 match record, well clear of the rest of the field, while Miami Heretics, LA Thieves, G2 Minnesota, Riyadh Falcons and FaZe Vegas filled out the automatic Playoff places behind it. FaZe Vegas qualified for the LAN event in sixth place with a 6-5 record, a modest seed that gave little indication of the run the team would go on to make once the bracket moved to best-of-five and best-of-seven series at the venue itself.

Toronto KOI, Paris Gentle Mates, Vancouver Surge and Carolina Royal Ravens all finished the Qualifiers in the bottom half of the standings and had to win their way through a Play-in round just to reach the main Playoff bracket, with Boston Breach and Cloud9 New York eliminated before the LAN stage began at all. Paris Gentle Mates' run from a 4-7 Qualifiers record through the Play-ins and into the lower bracket final against FaZe Vegas was itself one of the weekend's notable turnarounds, even though it ended in the sweep that sent FaZe to the grand final.

The full placement table

Beyond the top two, Major 2's payouts and CDL points extended well down the bracket. Toronto KOI's run to the lower bracket final, cut short by FaZe Vegas, was worth third place and $50,000, while LA Thieves' loss to FaZe in the opening round of the Playoffs still carried a fourth-place finish and $30,000. Paris Gentle Mates and G2 Minnesota tied for fifth at $15,000 each, with Riyadh Falcons and Miami Heretics splitting seventh for $7,500 apiece. Vancouver Surge and Carolina Royal Ravens finished ninth and tenth without a cash placement, the two Play-in survivors whose Birmingham runs ended without reaching the money rounds of the bracket.

The season's structure around this result

Major 2 sat inside a Black Ops 7 season built around four Majors before a season-closing Championship, running from early December 2025 through the following summer. Each Major follows the same shape: a multi-week online Qualifiers round robin that seeds a twelve-team field, a Play-in round for the bottom-seeded teams, and a LAN Playoffs bracket that pays out $150,000 to the winner and CDL points that count toward qualification for the Championship later in the year.

What comes next

The Call of Duty League's season continues with two more Majors before the year-closing Championship: a third Major in the spring, followed by a fourth before the league's teams converge on a Grand Finals event later in the year. FaZe Vegas's Birmingham win gives the organization CDL points and a share of the $150,000 prize pool, but with three events still to play, the trophy is one result inside a longer points race rather than a season-defining one on its own.

For OpTic Texas, the runner-up finish keeps the pressure on a roster that has now reached back-to-back Major finals without converting either into a trophy, a pattern the team will look to break when qualifiers for the season's third Major begin. Paris Gentle Mates and Toronto KOI, eliminated earlier in the Birmingham bracket, both carry Major 2 results into the next Qualifiers needing a stronger showing to match the pace OpTic and FaZe have set across the season's first half.

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