IEM Rio Major, the first Valve-sponsored CS:GO event in Brazil, ran from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13, featuring 24 of some of the best teams in the world.
Squads hailing from Europe, the Americas, and Asia qualified via Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournaments and fled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to play in the $1.25 million event. The 16 teams with Challenger or Contender status started their journey in the Challengers Stage and only half of them advanced to the Legends Stage, where the best eight teams from RMR were waiting.
FURIA was the only Brazilian team to move to Legends Stage and were one of the seven to make the Champions Stage alongside Natus Vincere, Cloud9, MOUZ, Fnatic, Team Spirit, Outsiders, and Heroic. These eight squads got to play the playoffs at the Jeunesse Arena, the ultimate venue of IEM Rio Major.
The grand finalists of IEM Rio Major were Outsiders and Heroic. The former defeated Fnatic and MOUZ in the quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively, while the latter eliminated Spirit and FURIA to advance to the finals.
The grand finals were played on Nov. 13 after a showmatch between Team Brazil (FalleN, fer, fnx, coldzera, and TACO) and Team Sweden (karrigan, f0rest, GeT_RiGhT, friberg, and olofmeister).
Who won IEM Rio CS:GO Major?
Outsiders were the champions of IEM Rio Major following their victory over Heroic on Nov. 13. The Russian squad featuring Jame, Pyotr “fame” Bolyshev, Evgeniy “FL1T” Lebedev, David “n0rb3r7” Daniyelyan, and Aleksei “Qikert” Golubev, won Mirage by 16-12 and Overpass by 16-5 to take the trophy home and $500,000 in prize pool.
This victory at the IEM Rio Major is the second of Virtus.pro in CS:GO Majors. The name Outsiders was used due to sanctions after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The other organizations that have won Majors are Astralis (four), Fnatic (three), Ninjas in Pyjamas, LDLC, Envy, Luminosity Gaming, SK Gaming, Gambit, C9, NAVI, and FaZe Clan.
