MOUZ Slay Vitality But Fall to Team Spirit in IEM Cologne Finale: Recap and 2026 Major Announcement

IEM Cologne 2025 was one for the ages with monumental upsets like NiKo and m0NESY not making it to Stage 2. However, the biggest heartbreak was in store for MOUZ, who managed to take down the dominant Team Vitality squad only to fall to Team Spirit in the Grand Final. Here's how it went down.

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Team Spirit Crushes MOUZ 3-0 in IEM Cologne 2025 Grand Final

Credit: @ESLCS on X

Coming into the series, MOUZ had done the impossible. They took down Team Vitality, ending their 37-series win streak and breaking the bridesmaid's curse on their 8th clash this year. After handily dispatching the world #1 squad, MOUZ was heavily favoured coming into the Grand Final. Compounded by the fact that Team Spirit was fielding a new player who just made his debut in IEM Cologne, the pundits sided with MOUZ as well.

The first map in the best-of-five series was Mirage. Picked by MOUZ, they got the start they needed by winning the pistol as Ts. However, almost nothing else came out of that half for them, dropping to a 10-2 deficit at the halfway point. An electric second-half rating of 1.73 by sh1ro and an ace by Chopper made sure that MOUZ never picked up momentum the entire game. Despite a small streak of rounds in the second half, MOUZ dropped their map pick 13-7.

Moving on to Ancient, MOUZ looked like they shook off the bad result in map one and built into a really strong first half. Despite losing the pistol and the conversions, MOUZ showed incredible resilience on their CT side to go from 0-4 down to closing it out 8-4. Despite losing their T side pistol, MOUZ won the force buy and conversions, putting them in a prime position to steal Team Spirit's map pick at 11-5. At this point, a resurgent donk took charge of the game, stemming the bleeding at 11-5. From here, Team Spirit went on a flawless streak to close out the game at 13-11, putting MOUZ down 2-0 in the best-of-five series.

Nuke was MOUZ's last hope to push this series to Overpass and Train. After a strong 3-0 start, MOUZ didn't look too shaken from how the series had gone on so far. However, this didn't last as Team Spirit ran away with the game once the guns came out. A particularly painful fumble was round 9, where MOUZ threw a 4v2 to Zontix and Shiro. This made sure they had no money into the next and got steamrolled for the rest of the half, ending it 8-4.

Despite winning the pistol and the conversion, MOUZ failed to string any further rounds, ending their IEM Cologne run with a 13-6 on Nuke, and a crushing 3-0 series loss. Despite slaying the juggernaut that is Team Vitality, MOUZ ran out of steam just before the finish line, securing another heartbreaking second-place finish.