IEM Dallas 2025 Power Rankings: Can Vitality make it six?

IEM Dallas 2025 is just a few days away, with 16 teams heading to the United States to fight for their share of a $1,000,000 prize pool. ESL events always deliver, with North America in particular always bringing the hype. After last year’s legendary GStew run at IEM Dallas, this year has an awful lot to live up to.

Most of the familiar faces at the top of the CS2 scene will be in attendance at IEM Dallas 2025. The most notable team skipping the event is Team Spirit, with obligations at PGL Astana running too close for comfort for the team, especially with the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025 just around the corner. Even without Team Spirit, it’s fair to expect IEM Dallas 2025 to play host to tons of exciting matches, with the obvious storyline of note being Vitality’s ongoing dominance.

Vitality’s form is getting silly now

Vitality – do you fancy giving someone else a chance to win? It’s five tournaments won in a row now for the team, sparking talk of a Vitality era coming into IEM Dallas 2025. It’s a level of dominance we’ve not seen in the modern era of Counter-Strike, an incomparable level of greatness that now sees them on one of the longest winning runs of all time. Frankly, their inability to lose, no matter how grim it looks, is getting a little silly at this point. Vitality are the obvious favorites of IEM Dallas 2025, and it’s impossible to argue otherwise.

After finishing runners-up to Stewie2K’s G2 at IEM Dallas 2024, there’s extra motivation for Vitality to avenge their loss this year. The fact that it could even kickstart a second ESL Grand Slam run for 2025 would only be the cherry on top of it all. With players like ZywOo and ropz at the very top of their game at the moment, anything feels possible.

Falcons might be the only real threat to Vitality’s dominance

Falcons losing to Vitality in a Grand Final is starting to feel a little bit like Groundhog Day, isn’t it? Twice now, the team have come within one map of besting Vitality in these Finals, and twice, they’ve failed. Regardless, they’re knocking on the door of greatness, and it feels like only a matter of time before they eventually break through. Teams often have a window when close to winning, in which they have to get over the line. Falcons could be nearing that point, especially with the shadow of the BLAST.tv Austin Major looming. The pressure is on for NiKo and m0NESY to go back-to-back in consecutive years at IEM Dallas.

The key piece here is NiKo. The argument has been made after his recent events that NiKo has a Grand Finals problem, and he’s arguably the reason Falcons haven’t emerged victorious in their last two attempts. I fancy Falcons to make it all the way to the Final at IEM Dallas 2025, but we need to see a stronger showing from NiKo at the last hurdle.

Potential IEM Dallas 2025 underdogs

Who doesn’t love to follow a good underdog story? IEM Dallas 2025 has plenty of potential underdogs, but I reckon there are a few worth mentioning who could cause real problems at this event. The first is obviously FaZe Clan. They sit 7th on our IEM Dallas Power Rankings after a frankly terrible 2025 so far, but they’ve hit the panic button and rolled the dice by bringing in CS:GOAT s1mple in for broky. It’s the ultimate “high risk, high reward” roster move, and if s1mple can capture even 70% of his prime, then FaZe Clan will be a must-watch team at IEM Dallas 2025.

Then, there’s Team Liquid. After a tough debut for siuhy as IGL at PGL Bucharest, the team showed swift progress to make it to the arena at IEM Melbourne 2025. They’ve had a few weeks away from the server since, and if they can show similar growth coming into Dallas, I see no reason why they can’t compete with the very top teams in this event. It’s no guarantee, but I’m a big believer that siuhy is excellent at raising the ceiling of his teams – make sure you keep your eyes on Team Liquid at IEM Dallas 2025.