Natus Vincere defeat FaZe 2-0 at BLAST Rivals

Natus Vincere defeated FaZe 2-0 in the BLAST Rivals 2026 Season 1 semi-final on March 5, taking Dust2 13-5 and Ancient 13-11 to advance to the grand final.

FaZe opened on Dust2, diverging from their earlier veto, and took a 4-1 lead after a failed 1v3 clutch against Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy. Natus Vincere recovered as their CT-side economy stabilized and led 7-5 at halftime following key plays on the A site. NAVI won the second-half pistol and put together a six-round T-side run to close Dust2 13-5.

On Ancient, NAVI started on the T side with a 5-0 run, fueled by consecutive multikills from Drin “makazze” Shaqiri and a 1v4 from Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov to end the half. FaZe rallied from 3-9 down after Helvijs “broky” Saukants produced a four‑kill 1v3 in the second pistol round and Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken converted a later 1v3. FaZe briefly led 10-9 before NAVI steadied their economy and won four of the final five rounds to seal Ancient 13-11.

Individual match stats reflected the result. W0nderful led NAVI with 34 kills and a 1.32 rating. Mihai “iM” Ivani had 32 kills and a 1.31 rating, and makazze finished with 33 kills and the team-high damage per round. For FaZe, Ryan “Neityu” Aubry recorded 30 kills with a 1.11 rating and Twistzz had 27 kills with a 1.04 rating. Helvijs “broky” Saukants finished with a 0.82 rating, David “frozen” Čerňanský with 0.80, and Jakub “jcobbb” Pietruszewski with 0.53.

Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen reflected on the tense finish on Ancient: “They were just together, trading us, and we ended up completely failing the clutch situations. I think they just got control, and we were a bit annoyed because we don’t usually lose this way; we have decent protocols. They caught us off guard at first, but I’m glad we came back.”

Drin “makazze” Shaqiri commented on a potential final against Vitality, stating he expects a win and that the previous match against them left him motivated to respond if they meet in the final.

Natus Vincere will face the winner of Vitality versus GamerLegion in the best-of-five final. NAVI reached recent finals at ESL Pro League Season 23 and BLAST Open Rotterdam and finished in the quarter-finals at IEM Rio.