FURIA dominate Vitality to win IEM Chengdu 2025

Leonardo Biazzi Published November 9, 2025

FURIA are the champions of IEM Chengdu 2025 following a 3-0 sweep in the best-of-five grand finals over Vitality on November 9th.

This is a statement victory for FURIA, as they’ve won their biggest title ever against a powerful Vitality. Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and co. are the undisputed best CS2 team of 2025, and had never lost a BO5 by 3-0 before.

IT'S ALLLL OVER!!! @FURIA HAVE WON #IEM CHENGDU 2025

🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇱🇻🇰🇿 pic.twitter.com/ISTa0CBglt

— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) November 9, 2025

IEM Chengdu 2025 grand finals: FURIA 3-0 Vitality

Molodoy has all the makings of a legendary player. Credit: © ESL

Picks and bans:

• FURIA banned Nuke
• Vitality banned Train
• FURIA picked Ancient
• Vitality picked Inferno
• FURIA picked Overpass
• Vitality picked Dust2
• Mirage was left as the decider

FURIA started the series strong, having claimed a hard-fought 13-11 victory on Ancient, a map that neither they nor Vitality play much. The Brazilians followed it up, as a dominant T-side won them Inferno (13-10).

Despite all the pressure, Vitality played very well on Overpass and nearly won it. Still, FURIA broke their economy at the very end, and closed out the series with another 13-11 victory.

Everyone on FURIA had their moments in the grand finals, but Danil “molodoy” Golubenko once again led the show. The Kazakh dropped 61 kills and was as reliable as ever with the AWP, even though he faced Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut. Molodoy averaged a 1.27 rating throughout the tournament, the fourth highest, and was named the MVP.

Your #ESLProTour DHL MVP is @tvoy_molodoy! What a tournament from him 🙏

Check out what he had to say when speaking with @FreyaSpiers after lifting the trophy 🏆#IEM @DeutschePostDHL pic.twitter.com/odG9yfSl6o

— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) November 9, 2025

This 3-0 win over Vitality cemented FURIA as one of the biggest favorites to win the StarLadder Budapest Major, the second Valve-sponsored event of the year and the final tier-one LAN of 2025.

The Brazilians had already won FISSURE Playground 2 and the Thunderpick World Championship, but IEM Chengdu featured all the best CS2 teams in the world.

FURIA’s captain Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo shared his thoughts about overcoming Vitality, who had knocked FURIA out of ESL Pro League Season 22 in October, and why FURIA picked Ancient.

I’m so proud of my team, it was a very difficult matchup. Vitality is the big boss, but today they fall.

Both of us don’t really play Ancient that much, but yeah, you need big balls sometimes and we showed that.

IEM Chengdu 2025 final standings, prize pool distribution

Feature image credit: © ESL