Aurora beat JiJieHao 2-0 to reach Esports World Cup playoffs

Aurora defeated JiJieHao 2-0 at the Esports World Cup LCQ in Paris on August 15, 2026, to secure a place in the tournament playoffs. The Turkish-majority roster won Mirage 13-6 and closed the series on Anubis.

On Mirage, JiJieHao won both pistol rounds on their map pick but were unable to stop Aurora, who finished the map 13-6. On Anubis, Aurora held a six-round lead at halftime after stronger mid-round execution; JiJieHao lost the second-half pistol to a molotov and managed one CT-side round before Aurora completed the match. Ismailcan “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş recorded a quad-kill to finish the game.

Aurora’s leading performers were Jimi “Jimpphat” Salo (39-16, 1.69 rating), Damjan “kyxsan” Stoilkovski (32-20, 1.64) and Özgür “woxic” Eker (33-13, 1.51). XANTARES ended 22-22 with a 0.91 rating. For JiJieHao, Bebu “Bibu” Aadil posted 26-30 with a 0.93 rating, Dionis “sinnopsyy” Budeci was 21-30 with a 0.84 rating, and Osama “0SAMAS” Orabi finished 11-31 with a 0.53 rating.

Across their matches in Paris against GamerLegion and Aurora, JiJieHao averaged roughly five rounds per map.

JiJieHao coach Torbjørn “mithR” Nyborg reflected after the match: “We came to Paris just hoping to make it through the LCQ. Making a good result at the LCQ would have been enough. Then we go to the main tournament, we get an upset against Spirit. We played so well in that game, everyone was trading each other. I don’t know what happened exactly. We’ll need to look at it. We need to be proud that we made it to the main tournament. There are some important lessons here. While we’re not ready for tier-1, there are definitely things that we can take away from this to improve even more for the next ones.”

Aurora’s victory advances the team into the Esports World Cup playoff bracket.