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Team Falcons swept Spacestation Gaming 4-0 in the Rocket League grand final of the Esports World Cup 2026 on Sunday, August 16, winning $400,000 of the event's $1 million prize pool in Paris. The result came months after Team Falcons missed that season's Paris Major entirely, its first failure to reach an RLCS Major since the organization acquired the Sandrock Gaming core ahead of RLCS 2021-22.
Samy "dralii" Hajji led all players with seven goals across the final, while Saleh "Rw9" Bakhashwin was named tournament MVP after finishing the decider with six assists, eight saves and a goal of his own. Falcons needed overtime to win the opening game before pulling away, closing out a tournament in which the team had not dropped a series heading into the final.
Results reported by Field Level Media and a Ukrainian esports news outlet, Paris, August 16, 2026.
How the final was won
Falcons needed overtime to take Game 1 on Beckwith Park, 3-2, before cruising to a 3-1 win on Forbidden Temple and a 4-1 win on DFH Stadium's 10th Anniversary variant, closing out the series 3-0 with a 4-0 win on Utopia Coliseum. Dralii's seven goals across the four games made him the series' top scorer, while Spacestation's João "diaz" Henrique accounted for three of his team's four goals in the loss, nearly matching Falcons' own top performer despite the lopsided final result.
| Game | Score | Map |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Falcons, 3-2 (OT) | Beckwith Park |
| 2 | Falcons, 3-1 | Forbidden Temple |
| 3 | Falcons, 4-1 | DFH Stadium (10th Anniversary) |
| 4 | Falcons, 3-0 | Utopia Coliseum |
Game results reported by Field Level Media, August 2026.
A season that nearly went off course
Team Falcons' run to the EWC title came after the organization missed the Paris Major entirely following a weak domestic season, the first time Falcons had failed to reach an RLCS Major since building its roster around the Sandrock Gaming core at the start of the 2021-22 season. Samy "dralii" Hajji's arrival at the start of 2026, replacing longtime player Mohammed "trk511" Alotaibi, gave the organization a new look heading into the year, and Sunday's win over Spacestation marked the first time Falcons had beaten the North American organization, closing the gap on a result that had eluded the team through the rest of the season.
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Missing a Major costs an organization Circuit Ranking Points and a shot at that event's prize money, but it does not remove a team from the rest of the season's events. Team Falcons' EWC title shows a team can recover from an early setback by peaking at a different event entirely.
Dralii's third straight EWC title, three different teams
Hajji's win extended a personal streak that the tournament's own coverage described as unprecedented across esports: a third consecutive Esports World Cup title, each one won with a different team. The Moroccan-Canadian player, born in October 2007, won EWC 2024 with Team BDS the same year he took the RLCS World Championship with that organization, then moved on to Karmine Corp in October 2024 and won EWC 2025 with that roster as overall tournament MVP, a season that also included a Birmingham Major title and a third-to-fourth finish at that year's World Championship. His move to Team Falcons in September 2025 set up Sunday's result as his third straight EWC title with his third different organization, giving Hajji a case as one of the most adaptable champions in Rocket League's competitive history.
Spacestation's roster built through change
Spacestation Gaming's run to the final came from a lineup reshaped mid-season: Brazilian player João "diaz" Henrique, who joined the organization in November 2025, initially played alongside Nicholas "Chronic" Iwanski and Jack "reveal" LeDuc before Zachary "zach" Stone returned from retirement to replace Chronic ahead of Split 2. That swap turned Spacestation into the international contender that reached Sunday's final, with diaz, still just 18 at the time of the Esports World Cup, playing a central role across every international LAN the team attended during the stretch.
Spacestation's breakthrough run
Spacestation Gaming reached its first LAN grand final of the season at the Esports World Cup, a result built on a string of close series through the bracket: a 3-2 win over MIBR.LOS, a 3-0 win over Karmine Corp, a 4-3 win over Shopify Rebellion and a 4-3 win over NiP.eStar to reach the final. The North American third seed was also the only team from its region to win its opening match of the tournament, giving Spacestation's run added significance for a region that had struggled against European and Middle Eastern competition through most of the event.
Related readHow The International 2026 was filled: invites and qualifiersKarmine Corp's early exit
Karmine Corp entered Paris as the Paris Major winners and reigning EWC champions, making the organization a favorite heading into the bracket, but the French team finished fourth after a 0-3 loss to Spacestation Gaming early in the tournament, a 0-4 semifinal loss to Team Falcons and a 0-3 defeat to NiP.eStar in the third-place decider. The result marked a sharp drop for a team that had entered the tournament as the defending champion in all but total, with three straight series losses to close out its own title defense.
Karmine Corp's Paris Major win in May, its first Major title since Birmingham in March 2025, had come without dropping a single series, closing with a 4-1 win in the final behind a roster of Charles "juicy" Sabiani, Alexandre "Extra" Paoli, Axel "Vatira" Touret and Tristan "Atow." Soyez. Juicy credited hard work for the result at the time, while the team's own post-Major comments had already pointed toward both the World Championship in Fort Worth and a title defense at the Esports World Cup as its next targets, a defense that ended three rounds short of the final Karmine Corp had been chasing since Paris.
How the Esports World Cup's format worked
Rocket League's bracket at the Esports World Cup ran on an upper and lower bracket structure with series played up to best-of-seven, giving an eliminated team one further chance before exiting the tournament rather than a single-elimination knockout. A third-place decider rounded out the bracket's final day alongside the grand final itself, with NiP.eStar's 0-3 win over Karmine Corp in that match settling the podium's final spot before Falcons and Spacestation took the stage for the tournament's headline series.
Related readThe International 2026: Shanghai venue, dates and format are setA result years in the making for the Falcons core
Team Falcons' Rocket League roster traces back to the organization's acquisition of the Sandrock Gaming core ahead of the 2021-22 RLCS season, a signing that gave the Saudi Arabia-based organization its first real foothold at the top of the competitive scene. Brothers Saleh "Rw9" and Yazeed "Kiileerrz" Bakhashwin have anchored that roster across the years since, giving Sunday's EWC win a long-term continuity that stood in contrast to Spacestation's more recently assembled, and more frequently reshuffled, lineup on the other side of the final.
What the result means for the rest of the season
Team Falcons' win pushed the organization to 1,000 Esports World Cup club points and the top of the overall club standings at 4,400 points, a season-long competition that runs across every title at the event rather than Rocket League's bracket alone, rewarding organizations that field strong rosters across multiple games rather than just one. For Spacestation Gaming, the runner-up finish stands as the clearest proof yet that the organization's North American roster can compete with the sport's best on a LAN stage, even without the trophy to show for Sunday's result or a season that had otherwise been defined by roster changes more than results.
A final that settled little, statistically
Dralii's seven goals against diaz's three told only part of the story of a series that finished 4-0 but never felt as one-sided on the field as the scoreline suggested, with Spacestation pushing Game 1 to overtime and keeping each of the next three games within reach for stretches before Falcons' composure in the closing minutes repeatedly tipped the result. That gap between the dominant final score and the competitiveness of the actual games played underlined how much the series had hinged on a handful of decisive moments rather than one team simply outclassing the other across four full games.
What comes next
Team Falcons' recovery from missing the Paris Major to winning the EWC gives the organization momentum heading into the rest of the RLCS calendar, with Circuit Ranking Points still to be decided before the season's eventual World Championship. Karmine Corp's early exit leaves the Paris Major winners with questions to answer before their title defense resumes, while Spacestation Gaming carries its breakthrough LAN final into the stretch of the season still to come.
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