Spirit, NAVI, and Vitality lead eight teams qualified for BLAST Bounty Spring 2025

Images: BLAST

Spirit, NAVI, and Vitality were among the four teams that enjoyed a perfect run through the tournament's closed qualifier.

Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) esports in 2025 will be kicking off the competition with BLAST Bounty Spring 2025, which will host its main event in the BLAST Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark from January 23 to 26. Eight teams qualified for the main event after surviving the 32-team closed qualifier from January 14 to 19, namely Team Spirit, Natus Vincere (NAVI), Team Vitality, Eternal Fire, G2 Esports, BetBoom Team, HEROIC, and paiN Gaming.

Those eight qualified teams will be fighting for their cut of the tournament's unique $500,000 ‘bounty’ prize pool and BLAST Frequent Flyer Tokens. 

Each team that participates in a BLAST Bounty event will have a certain amount of bounty money allocated to them based on their seeding in the tournament, with the highest-seeded teams having bigger bounties. The lowest-seeded teams had the chance to select their opponents from the high seeds in order to try to claim their bounties, significantly raising the stakes in the competition.

Teams can guarantee the money they will take home from a BLAST Bounty event by claiming 50% of the bounty won from each match. The other 50% of that bounty will then carry over to their next game, and be added to the winning team’s bounty.

Finally, the BLAST Frequent Flyer Tokens are awarded to teams based on consistent participation to BLAST events. At the end of 2025, a minimum of $2 million will be distributed to teams based on the number of tokens they earned throughout the year. For BLAST Bounty Spring 2025, all teams that qualified for the main event are guaranteed one token each, with three tokens being awarded to the winner of the tournament.

Here's how the eight teams that qualified for BLAST Bounty Spring 2025's main event made their way through the closed qualifier:

Spirit, NAVI, Vitality lead qualified teams for BLAST Bounty Spring 2025

Shanghai Major champions Spirit, Copenhagen Major champions NAVI, and IEM Cologne 2024 champions Vitality led the pack of eight qualified teams for the BLAST Bounty Spring 2025 main event with perfect 4-0 runs through the closed qualifier.

Fresh off getting crowned as the second-ever Major champions for CS2, Spirit still looked like they're in title-winning form, as they breezed through Fnatic in the closed qualifier's round of 32 with wins in Train (13-10) and Nuke (13-4). They then stomped FlyQuest in Anubis (13-3) and Dust II (13-1) to qualify for the main event and increase their bounty to $67,500 – tied for highest in the tournament so far.

NAVI also took a $67,500 bounty to the main event by sweeping Imperial Female (13-7 in Ancient, 13-8 in Mirage) and Astralis (13-11 in Inferno, 13-6 in Ancient). Meanwhile, Vitality's first foray with new rifler Robin “ropz” Kool is off to a good start as they went through Metizport (13-11 in Mirage, 13-9 in Dust II) and Virtus.pro (13-11 in Train, 13-6 in Inferno) to boost their bounty to $63,750.

Eternal Fire were the fourth and most surprising team to go on a perfect run in the closed qualifier, starting off their campaign by beating Fluxo in Mirage (13-9) and Dust II (13-8). The Turkish squad then soured the debut of Team Falcons' new roster, headlined by former G2 star rifler Nikola “NiKo” Kovač, by beating them in Inferno (13-6) and Nuke in overtime (19-17). Eternal Fire's current bounty amounts to $35,000. 

G2 can flex that they're at least better than NiKo's new team so far with Nikita “HeavyGod” Martynenko as their new rifler, though their path to the main event wasn't exactly the smoothest of journeys. They had to pull off back-to-back 2-1 reverse sweeps versus B8 (13-16 in Ancient, 13-6 in Inferno, 13-11 in Dust II) and BIG (8-13 in Ancient, 13-9 in Mirage, 13-6 in Dust II), earning a $65,000 bounty in the process.

BetBoom and HEROIC notably qualified for the main event tied for the lowest amount of bounty won at $25,000. BetBoom also had to survive back-to-back reverse sweeps over MOUZ (17-19 in Dust II, 13-7 in Nuke, 13-11 in Mirage) and FURIA Esports (11-13 in Dust II, 13-11 in Mirage, 13-7 in Anubis). As for HEROIC, they first defeated 3DMAX (14-16 in Ancient, 13-10 in Dust II, 13-7 in Anubis) before taking down Team Liquid (11-13 in Mirage, 13-8 in Anubis, 13-10 in Ancient).

Finally, paiN rounded out the list of qualified teams in the main event with one of the more impressive runs of the closed qualifier, starting with a reverse sweep over GamerLegion in the round of 32 (10-13 in Inferno, 13-7 in Mirage, 13-11 in Nuke). The Brazilian squad then soundly swept the runners-up of both Majors last year, FaZe Clan, in Dust II (13-10) and Inferno (13-11), a feat made more impressive by the fact that FaZe recently signed Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski to replace ropz. PaiN will be taking a $30,000 bounty to the main event.

BLAST Bounty Spring 2025's main event will follow a single-elimination bracket format. The lower seeds in Eternal Fire, BetBoom, HEROIC, and paiN will be able to pick their next opponents from among the higher seeds, namely Spirit, NAVI, Vitality, and G2. The main event will be hosted from January 23 to 26.