NAVI Outplay MOUZ To Take Home IEM Rio 2026’s Trophy

The 3-1 defeat that G2 Esports inflicted on them was consequently dished out to MOUZ. It wasn’t easy though - even though NAVI took the first two maps, MOUZ pushed back by taking Mirage and leading 10-2 on map 4. However, NAVI pulled off a super rare eight-round comeback to close the series out with a poetic 3-1 scoreline.

What did both teams say?

After the epic grand final, Justinas "⁠jL⁠" Lekavicius of the winning team said: "We spoke about it the whole tournament, no matter how much you're down, you can still win. But it also works both ways, no matter how much you are up, you can also still lose, so keep focus. I'm surprised how well we are developing as a team, and as individuals. We came in at different levels of understanding, but we're all keeping a steady pace of improvement. I didn't expect to be this good in this moment, but there's still work to do."

On the other hand, Jimi "⁠Jimpphat⁠" Salo of the losing team said: "I'm really out of words, and am really sad at the moment, but I also know there is not much to do anymore. The game is over, and we just gotta learn and play better next time. I don't think we have that fear [of the stage] anymore or are pressured. We have so much experience already that I think it's basically overcome at this point."

Who got the MVP medal?

Winning IEM Rio 2024 marks NAVI’s fourth trophy for this year alongside PGL Major Copenhagen, the Esports World Cup, and ESL Pro League Season 20. This fourth trophy would not have been possible without Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan and his stellar performance throughout the tournament. The MVP was also interviewed by HLTV afterwards and had many words to say.

When asked about what was going through his mind in the aftermath of the tournament, iM said:

Thank you, I can start with that. I didn't expect the MVP at all, I told you that BanKs told me, I was walking, I was going to the player lounge, and BanKs told me and I had instant goosebumps. I didn't expect it at all. It's pretty amazing I will say, it's amazing that we managed to win in this fashion. We played very good on the first two maps rotating and all of that stuff, everything worked for us.

After that we got very stomped on Mirage, we didn't expect that. We were, how do I say it... expecting to fight back on the third map, but nothing worked for us. Every close... no, wait, that was Ancient (laughs). Bro, we got full stomped on Mirage and after that, on Ancient, even Aleksi said that we were this close to breaking them on CT side. Every time it was one alive, two alive, one alive, very close situations, and that's how we ended up in a 10-2 situation. But we managed to come back, which is fucking crazy.

When asked what he felt about winning his fourth trophy and the first IEM Rio for the Aleksi, iM said:

It means a lot. Every trophy means a lot for us because, like I said, we are not a team like, for example, FaZe, they have a lot of experience, they know how to play, they know how to react to winning trophies and for us, it's something new even though we are in the finals six times in a row. It's pretty crazy.

For Aleksi, I actually didn't know about this curse, I just saw it in the morning and I was like, 'Hmm (tuts), it doesn't matter.' Because we had a discussion in the practice room of what we need to do, what we don't need to do because we had the experience from the other finals, the ones we lost and the ones we won. This is the first time in a best-of-five that we won the first map, so we started pretty damn good I would say.

When asked about the upcoming World Final and the leadup to it, iM said:

I cannot wait to go back home and sleep. We have, for the first time in I don't know how long... like it's three events, so I would say around one-and-a-half months, maybe two months, I have no clue actually, but the first time in this period that we have a break. Cause every time we're supposed to have a break it's whenever we're losing two games in the group stage and stuff like this, but we still don't have a day off, we have practices. After this long time, a break will be... Ohhh yeah, you can't even imagine.