Names of 12 invited teams for PGL Bucharest 2025 revealed

3 March 2025

From Sunday, April 6th 2025, to Sunday, April 13th 2025, many of the eyes in the Counter-Strike world will be on Bucharest, as PGL will be organizing PGL Bucharest 2025 those days. A total of sixteen of the world’s best Counter-Strike teams will get together in the Romanian capital to compete for a share of the prize pool, of which $ 400.000 has been reserved for the winners. Of those sixteen teams, twelve will receive a direct invitation from PGL and they have just revealed who those twelve direct invitations will go to.

PGL Cluj-Napoca winners not invited

The sixteen teams competing at the upcoming PGL Bucharest 2025 event consist of twelve direct invitations plus four teams from qualifiers in the Americas, Asia and Europe. The majority of the invitations were extended to teams that are top twelve of the Valve Regional Standings (VRS) in March. As a matter of fact, the only two teams from the VRS top 12 not to be invited by PGL are Ukrainian organization NAVI and German organization MOUZ. The reason behind the exclusion of these two big names, who currently find themselves in sixth and eighth place in the VRS respectively, is unknown to us.
Below are the names of the twelve international esports organizations that have been directly invited to PGL Bucharest 2025:

Astralis (Denmark)	The MongolZ (Mongolia)
Eternal Fire (Turkey)	PaiN Gaming (Brazil)
FaZe Clan (United States)	Team Falcons (Saudi Arabia)
FURIA (Brazil)	Team Liquid (The Netherlands)
GamerLegion (Germany)	Virtus.pro (Russia)
G2 Esports (Germany)	3DMAX (France)

Second PGL event in 2025

PGL Bucharest 2025 will be the second PGL event this year, after PGL Cluj-Napoca, which took place in the second half of February 2025. The event organizer got off to a flying start of the year by attracting more than half a million peak viewers during the event’s Grand Final, a number they are hoping to surpass in April when PGL Bucharest 2025 is around the corner. As part of that objective, the organization has introduced a new prize pool distribution where 50% of the total money will go to Clubs.

The eventual winners, for example, will take home total winnings worth $ 400.000. Of that amount, $ 200.00 comes from the prize pool and $ 200.000 comes in the form of a Club Reward. The runner-up will bag a total of $ 187.500, built up of $ 93.750 from the prize pool and $ 97.750 Club Reward. The number three of PGL Bucharest 2025 will get $ 150.000 in total winnings, made up of $ 75.000 from the prize pool and $ 75.000 from Club Rewards. This distribution is applicable to the winnings of each of the sixteen competing teams.

PGL Bucharest 2025 will start with a Group Stage with a Best-of-3 Swiss System format. The best eight teams then proceed to the Playoff Stage, which has a single-elimination bracket structure and a Grand Final that will be played in a Best-of-5 format.