Vitality sweep PARIVISION to win PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026

Vitality won PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026 on Sunday, February 22, 2026, beating PARIVISION 3-0 in the grand final, HLTV reported that evening. The final was a best-of-five, a series that ends when one team has won three maps, and the French organization needed only the minimum: Overpass 13-10, Dust2 13-4 and Inferno 16-13 after overtime.

It was the sixth series Vitality played in Romania and the sixth they won. By HLTV's count it is also the 11th tournament the team has won since ropz joined in January 2025, and the second of this year, two weeks after IEM Kraków.

HLTV, report on the grand final of PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026, February 22, 2026.

Three maps, three different stories

A Counter-Strike series is played map by map, and HLTV's report gives each map of this final in two halves, with the score at the break and the score at the end. Two of the three maps ended when Vitality reached 13 rounds. The third went to overtime and finished 16-13.

PARIVISION started better. On Overpass they won the first four rounds, according to HLTV's account of the match. Vitality turned that into a 7-5 lead by the break and closed the map 13-10. HLTV noted that it was the team's ninth Overpass win in a row, and that their last defeat on that map dated from IEM Chengdu in early November.

Dust2 was the short one. Vitality led 9-3 at the half and finished 13-4. The win extended a run the statistics site put at eleven maps on Dust2 going into the series, a streak that began in November.

Inferno was the only map on which PARIVISION were ahead at the break, 7-5. They stayed in it until the end of regulation: HLTV credits xiELO with winning a round alone against two opponents to force overtime. Vitality took the extra rounds and the map, 16-13, and with it the trophy.

The line-ups were the ones both teams had used all week. Vitality fielded apEX, their captain, with ZywOo, ropz, flameZ and mezii. PARIVISION lined up behind their own captain, Jame, with BELCHONOKK, xiELO, nota and zweih.

flameZ leads the final, ZywOo takes the medal

HLTV sums up every player's match in a single number, its Rating 3.0, printed on the scoreboard next to the kills and deaths. The higher the number, the better the match.

By that measure the best player of the final was flameZ, with a rating of 1.48 and 54 kills for 44 deaths across the three maps. ZywOo followed with 48 kills for 39 deaths, ropz with 49 for 38 and mezii with 49 for 40, while apEX, at 36 for 45, was the only one of the five with more deaths than kills. All five Vitality players finished above 1.00.

On the other side only Jame, at 1.02 with 49 kills for 41 deaths, was above 1.00. zweih finished at 0.92, BELCHONOKK at 0.86, xiELO at 0.79 and nota at 0.71.

The award for the whole tournament went elsewhere. HLTV named ZywOo its Most Valuable Player of the event, the 30th such medal of his career, in a separate article published the same evening. The site gave him a rating of 1.39 over the tournament, with a median of 1.44 per map, and pointed out that all six of Vitality's opponents sat in the top 11 of its world ranking. It added that flameZ was 0.04 ahead of him over the playoffs alone, and that ZywOo's group stage, rated 1.41, settled the choice.

The count puts him far ahead of anyone else on HLTV's list. The site credits s1mple with 21 MVP awards and device with 19. Of ZywOo's 30, it counts 23 as won at what it calls Big Events, against 14 for s1mple and 11 for device.

Six series without a defeat

PGL Cluj-Napoca opened on Saturday, February 14, with sixteen teams. HLTV's preview, published the day before, described the format: five rounds of a Swiss system, then a single-elimination playoff for the best eight.

Vitality went through that stage in three days. They beat G2 and The MongolZ 2-1, then MOUZ 2-0 on February 16, a third win that HLTV reported as securing their place in the playoffs. Those two 2-1 results were the only times they lost a map in the group stage, which they finished with three wins and no defeat.

The playoffs were played in front of a crowd at the BT Arena. The bracket HLTV published on February 18 put all four quarter-finals on February 20: Falcons against PARIVISION, MOUZ against Natus Vincere, Vitality against Aurora, and FURIA against The MongolZ. Vitality did not drop a map in the arena. They beat Aurora 2-0 in the quarter-finals, then The MongolZ 2-0 in a best-of-three semi-final on February 21. HLTV's report of that semi-final gave the scores as 16-13 on Mirage and 13-3 on Dust2, and said ropz posted a 2.37 rating on the second map, the second-best single-map rating of his career.

Counted over the whole event, the six series come to fifteen maps won and two lost: two maps won in each of the first five series and three in the final, with one map lost to G2 and one to The MongolZ.

PARIVISION's week ends one step short

The final brought together the two teams that had won the first tournaments of 2026. HLTV presented PARIVISION as the champions of BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1, and Vitality as the winners of IEM Kraków.

PARIVISION were ranked sixth by HLTV. In the ranking of February 16 that the site printed with its report of the final, MOUZ were fourth, The MongolZ ninth, G2 tenth and Aurora eleventh. Their road to the final was longer than Vitality's. They lost their opening series 0-2 to MOUZ, then needed all five Swiss rounds: HLTV's daily reports list wins over G2 and FaZe, a defeat against FURIA on February 17, and a win over FUT on February 18 that gave them their playoff place. That is three wins and two defeats.

In the arena they beat Falcons in the quarter-finals, then MOUZ 2-0 in the semi-finals, 13-11 on Dust2 and 13-10 on Inferno, reversing the result of the first day. Jame and zweih both finished that series with a 1.31 rating. HLTV wrote that it was PARIVISION's second final of the year, reached at their first top-tier tournament played in an arena, and described them as a young team with little experience of deciding matches before a large crowd.

Second place is not empty-handed. The prize distribution published by HLTV before the event sets the event's total at US$1.25 million, a sum that combines prize money and club share, the part paid to the organization. It assigns US$450,000 to first place and US$200,000 to second.

A field missing only two of the top teams

The field explains why the six wins carry weight. Of the sixteen teams, eleven sat in the top twelve of HLTV's ranking of February 9: Vitality first, FURIA second, Falcons third, MOUZ fourth, then PARIVISION, FaZe, Natus Vincere, G2, The MongolZ, Aurora and Astralis. The other five were 3DMAX, FUT, B8, paiN and HEROIC, the lowest-ranked team at 22nd.

Two invited teams declined, according to the same preview: Spirit, ranked fifth, and Liquid, ranked 15th. MOUZ came as the winners of the 2025 edition. They leave with third place this time, after beating The MongolZ in the bronze match played on the last day.

The eight teams that reached the BT Arena were Falcons, PARIVISION, MOUZ, Natus Vincere, Vitality, Aurora, FURIA and The MongolZ.

Second trophy in two weeks, and a US$1 million prize in sight

Vitality's year started on Sunday, February 8, in Kraków, where they beat FURIA 3-1 in the best-of-five final of IEM Kraków. HLTV called it the first trophy of 2026 for a team that entered the year as champions of the StarLadder Budapest Major. Cluj-Napoca makes two trophies in two weeks.

The Kraków title has a second value. It counts toward the ESL Grand Slam, a prize worth US$1 million in its sixth edition. HLTV wrote on February 9 that Vitality were one trophy away from it after winning IEM Dallas 2025, ESL Pro League Season 22 and IEM Kraków 2026, and that Spirit and FURIA each held one trophy counting toward the same prize.

The same article gave the next date. Vitality are skipping ESL Pro League, HLTV wrote, while Spirit and FURIA will play it, so their first chance to complete the Grand Slam comes at IEM Rio, played from April 13 to 19.

Cluj-Napoca keeps its February date

The tournament itself has a future beyond this edition. On the day of the final, HLTV reported that Emil Boc, the mayor of Cluj-Napoca, had announced in an Instagram post that the city will host PGL events in 2027, 2028 and 2029. With the 2025 and 2026 editions, that makes five years of partnership between the city and the Romanian organizer.

PGL already holds date blocks for two of those years, according to HLTV: February 13 to 21, 2027, and September 9 to 21, 2028. No date was given for 2029. The events stay at the BT Arena, with the playoffs again played in front of spectators.

Both editions held so far were PGL's first tournament of the year. HLTV noted that the first one drew four teams from its top ten, and that this one missed only two of them.

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