ESL One Birmingham 2026 power rankings — The best teams

Now that we have less than 24 hours before the start of ESL One Birmingham, it’s time for my favorite activity: ranking each team heading into the $1 million tournament.

No further ado is required; let’s just jump right in!

#1 — Team Yandex

With Team Liquid out of the picture in Birmingham as a result of them losing to MOUZ in the regional qualifiers some months ago, Yandex are now poised to win two tier 1 LANs in a row. Martin “Saksa” Sazdov continues to work his magic on this roster as a floor and ceiling raiser, and now they’ve got two tier 1 titles to their names. I feel that they will only continue to get better from here under Saksa’s tutelage, and I’d be surprised if they just fell off now while they have this kind of growing confidence.

That said, they won PGL Wallachia Season 7 with Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin standing in, rather than their actual offlaner Evgeniy “Noticed” Ignatenko. I’m aware that Noticed is a cracking offlaner himself, but I’m a little concerned about him missing time over Yandex’s last two tournament appearances. I’m slightly worried that he might be rusty as a consequence. Nevertheless, I’d be insane to underestimate the rest of his squad, given their great form right now.

#2 — Tundra Esports

It was obvious that Tundra Esports missed Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko dearly at PGL Wallachia Season 7. Sidelined due to visa issues, their carry wasn’t able to attend the event at all in Bucharest, forcing his team to tap the polarizing David “Parker” Nicho Flores as a substitute. While they still exited the tournament at a respectable sixth place all things considered, this club always aims much higher than where they ended up in Romania.

Now, they’re back at full power. Pure is the best carry player in the world right now, and his fearless playstyle is something that his teammates always count on in high pressure situations. With him returning to his seat, it’s more than likely that Tundra will make a deep run yet again — provided that he the rest of his team remain sharp throughout the competition.

#3 — BetBoom Team

BetBoom Team impressed me a lot at PGL Wallachia Season 7, getting all the way to the upper bracket final before getting eliminated by Liquid after falling to the lower bracket thanks to Yandex. Ilya “Kiritych” Ulyanov was of particular note to me, as he hit a higher gear in Bucharest and showed visibly better play as the newest member of the roster. He’s got some ways to go before he’s in the top five of carries this season, but he is steadily getting there.

As always, both Danil “gpk” Skutin and Vitalie “Save-” Melnic are there to back him up if he’s not at his best. These two are extremely reliable as mid and soft support respectively, and their impact as individual players is always obvious. I expect them to take the lessons they’ve learned from Wallachia into Birmingham, and possibly come back even stronger.

#4 — Team Spirit

Team Spirit had their loyal fans and even myself going when they came out of the PGL Wallachia Season 7 group stage with a 3-0 record. Looking back now, that performance in the Swiss leg was kind of a red herring, as they eventually got exposed by BetBoom and Yandex in the playoffs. This roster is brimming with talent and experience, but they’ve got some issues to solve if they want to reach the podium at Birmingham.

Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk’s questionable form lately has to be their biggest problem. Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov can only do so much heavy lifting from the offlane spot; Yatoro has to step up and be the explosive, lionhearted carry that we all know him to be. Without him, this team is significantly weaker than they should otherwise be.

#5 — Aurora Gaming

Something great had been brewing in the Aurora Gaming camp during DreamLeague Season 28. Despite having to play with a substitute in the form of Artem “lorenof” Melnyk, they made it all the way to the grand finals before running into the best team in the world in Tundra Esports. There’s only so much you can do when that happens, but they made a damn compelling case as actual contenders at the event.

Their momentum stopped cold at PGL Wallachia Season 7, though, as they were once again without one of their main players. With Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko unable to attend due to — you guessed it, visa issues — they had to settle for Alik “V-Tune” Vorobey at the carry position. V-Tune did play a lot better than I expected him to in Bucharest, but in the end, not having Nightfall around and Rafli “Mikoto” Fathur Rahman not playing super well proved to be their downfall.

But knowing that they’ve got their full roster back together for ESL One Birmingham, I have this club as my dark horse for the tournament. If their run at DreamLeague wasn’t just a fluke, I expect them to hit the top six spots at least.

#6 — Team Falcons

Team Falcons continued to slide further into mediocrity at PGL Wallachia Season 7, as they only managed to win one series out of the four they played in the Swiss stage. As I noted at the end of their run, the reason they’re slumping is not because they’re bad individually this season, but rather because they’re not as sharp and coordinated as they usually are as a unit.

By all rights, they should be up there with Yandex and Tundra fighting for the top spot on my list. Their roster is the most intimidating in terms of pure talent and skill — but none of that means anything if they can’t put the pieces together game to game. This team has always been a “greater than the sum of its parts” kind of deal, so they need to be locked in together if they want to succeed at Birmingham.

#7 — OG

OG have fallen back down to earth after their unexpectedly fast start to the season. Rival clubs were quick to sing their praises at PGL Wallachia Season 6 and DreamLeague Season 27, and rightfully so; they were proving themselves serious threats to even the top dogs at those events. Since then, though, they’ve gone back to where one would normally place Southeast Asian teams in the pecking order.

Despite this, I do believe that they still have the capability to upset the usual balance at Birmingham. Nikko “Nikko” Bilocura is still on this squad, after all, and so is Erin “Yopaj” Ferrer. If these two players find their groove, OG can be just as scary to face as any other team in the field. I’m just hoping that they don’t throw games away this time around.

#8 — PARIVISION

I want PARIVISION to do so much better, but they’ve just not done that as of late. As opposed to Falcons, there are a handful of individual performances one could point to as causes for their recent failures. Volodymyr “No[o]ne” Minenko and Edgar “9Class” Naltakian played poorly at DreamLeague Season 28, and I stand by this even after considering that they escaped the first group stage.

The fact that DM won at PGL Wallachia Season 7 without them is also quite damning. Imagine kicking someone and replacing them not even a week later, only for him to end up bagging a tier 1 trophy three months after you decided that he was the problem. Valery “SSS” Lazarev is by no means a total slouch from the offlane position, but DM proved at Wallachia that he wasn’t the issue and that PARIVISION have deficiencies elsewhere in the team.

Mind you, they’re still better on paper than the teams below this cutoff point, but I don’t see them making a particularly deep run in Birmingham nonetheless.

The rest

Two other teams in the field stand out to me as squads that really need to get it together: MOUZ and Natus Vincere. MOUZ have had abysmal tournament runs lately relative to their power on paper, and I’m honestly starting to worry that they might be headed towards a major roster change or worse. For Na’Vi, going from second place at BLAST Slam 6 Malta, to bombing out of both DreamLeague Season 28 and PGL Wallachia Season 7, was not the trajectory that they were hoping for.

I don’t really have much else to say about the others. Nigma Galaxy just lost Syed “SumaiL” Hassan, and have had to move Tony “No!ob” Assaf to the solo mid spot to make way for Cedrick “Davai” Deckmyn. I have very little faith that they’ll make any sort of splash at ESL One Birmingham.

As for Xtreme Gaming, the way they lost to Vici Gaming in the final round of the Wallachia Season 7 group stage has me thinking that Wang “Ame” Chunyu just doesn’t have it anymore. And when you constantly build a team around him, you have to hope that he’s at his best wherever you go. Thus, I’m not even honoring them with an actual spot on this list.