PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 preview: Teams, format and betting tips

Leonardo Biazzi Published October 22, 2025

Sixteen CS2 teams from all over the world will attend PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 and fight for their share of the $1.25 million prize pool. There are some unusual teams in attendance, as PGL Masters Bucharest offers a blend of tier-one and tier-two, so check out our preview to see what this CS2 tournament is about.

The team list for PGL Masters Bucharest is a bit disappointing, but it’s the best PGL could have done. The tournament clashes with IEM Chengdu, and a lot of CS2 teams preferred to fly to play the ESL event.

Here’s our complete preview for PGL Masters Bucharest.

How to watch PGL Masters Bucharest 2025

You can watch PGL’s official English broadcast on three platforms:

• Twitch
• YouTube
• Kick

Content creators will also co-stream the tournament in English or other languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, and German across their respective channels.

PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 teams

Legacy are coming in hot after winning CAC 2025 last week. Credit: Michal Konkol | © BLAST

Though PGL Masters Bucharest won’t feature big names like Team Spirit, Vitality, The MongolZ, or FURIA, it still have some of the best CS2 teams in the world, such as Aurora and 3DMAX.

The tournament will also feature Legacy, who won the CS Asia Championships earlier this month.

The complete team list for the event is as follows:

Players to watch during PGL Masters Bucharest 2025

XANTARES is definitely a strong candidate for MVP, should Aurora make a deep run. Credit: Michal Konkol | © BLAST

Some of the best CS2 players in the world will be attending PGL Masters Bucharest. Here’s our recommended player to watch on each team:

• Aurora: İsmailсan “XANTARES” Dörtkardeş
• 3DMAX: Bryan “Maka” Canda
• Team Liquid: Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski
• Astralis: Nicolai “device” Reedtz
• paiN Gaming: Lucas “nqz” Soares
• Legacy: Bruno “latto” Rebelatto
• GamerLegion: Fredrik “REZ” Sterner
• Gentle Mates: Antonio “MartinezSa” Martinez
• HEROIC: Linus “nilo” Bergman
• Fnatic: Benjamin “blameF” Bremer
• Ninjas in Pyjamas: Artem “r1nkle” Moroz
• B8: Andrii “npl” Kukharskyi
• MIBR: Felipe “insani” Yuji
• BetBoom: Kirill “Magnojez” Rodnov
• SAW: João “story” Vieira
• FlyQuest: Iulian “regali” Harjău

Format explained

PGL Masters Bucharest kicks off on October 26th with a Swiss system group stage. All matches are best-of-three, and teams must win three games to advance to the playoffs. If a team lose three games, they’re out of the tournament.

The group stage concludes on October 30th, when the final teams secure their spot in the top eight.

The single-elimination bracket playoffs start on October 31st, and the tournament finalizes on November 1st with the third-place decider match and the best-of-five grand finals.

Prize pool

PGL Masters Bucharest is a $1.25 million CS2 tournament. Half of the money goes exclusively to the players, and the other half goes to the organizations to incentivize them to attend the tournament.

Here’s the complete prize pool breakdown of PGL Masters Bucharest:

PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 odds and betting tips

Odds provided by GG.Bet on Oct. 22. Subject to change.

Fans shouldn’t sleep on Legacy as they’ve just won CAC 2025. Credit: Stephanie Lindgren | © BLAST

PGL Masters Bucharest is a great tournament if you’re into CS2 betting — especially if you’re doing it for fun — as there’s not a huge favorite to win it.

Here are our picks for PGL Masters Bucharest:

• Legacy aren’t the highest-ranked team attending PGL Masters Bucharest, but they are the ones with momentum in their favor. The Brazilian squad took down Virtus.pro, FUT, HEROIC, and 3DMAX (twice) en route to win CAC 2025.
• 3DMAX are also a strong candidate for the title, as they’ve been a solid team in this season.
• The same goes to Team Liquid, as they’ve finished CAC 2025, their first big tournament since EliGE joined in place of Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken, in third place.
• Aurora are currently going through a slump, but they were one of the best CS2 teams in the world in the first half of the year. If they can improve their map pool a bit, they could be a top contender at PGL Masters Bucharest.
• Astralis are a great pick, as long as you’re looking for an underdog, as the CS2 odds aren’t favoring them too much. However, everyone who watches the game knows that they can go far if device is feeling inspired.

All in all, PGL Masters Bucharest should be a fun tournament, especially because some of the lesser-ranked teams can surprise and gain momentum heading to the StarLadder Budapest Major in November. Legacy showed us at CAC 2025 that everything is possible, so we’ll see what PGL Masters Bucharest can deliver.

Feature image credit: © PGL