The Puppey-coached squad broke an 8-0 streak and booked an upper bracket final berth. Here is everything that happened on playoff Day 3, and what Friday’s schedule holds.
The Streak Stops Here: How PARIVISION Took Down Falcons
Team Falcons came into Thursday’s upper bracket semifinal with something close to an aura of invincibility. Seven wins from seven in Group A, a clean 2-0 sweep of Tundra Esports in the quarterfinals, and zero dropped series across the entire tournament. Eight consecutive Bo3 victories. The reigning TI champions looked every bit as dominant as their billing suggested.
PARIVISION had other plans. Puppey’s squad, who entered the playoffs off a 6-1 group stage in Group B and a hard-fought 2-1 quarterfinal win over Team Liquid, showed no hesitation in punching upwards. Falcons took the opening map, and for a moment, the script looked predictable. Then PARIVISION found a second gear. Alan “Satanic” Gallyamov turned the series on its head across games two and three, delivering the kind of pos 1 performance that doesn’t just win maps but breaks momentum. The final scoreline read 2-1 in favor of PARIVISION, and the biggest unbeaten run of DreamLeague Season 29 was over.
What made this result so striking wasn’t the margin. PARIVISION have been competitive against top teams all season, finishing 4th at ESL One Birmingham 2026 and 3rd at DreamLeague Season 27. The surprise was the timing and the context. Falcons had looked untouchable. Skiter, Malr1ne, and ATF were clicking on all cylinders, and Cr1t- and Sneyking were running the map control game that earned them The International title. Losing to PARIVISION in an upper bracket semifinal, after eight straight series wins, signals that this Falcons squad can be pushed out of their comfort zone when a team commits to fighting through a map-one loss.
For PARIVISION, the win secured something more than a top-three finish. It locked in an upper bracket final spot and brought Satanic back to the franchise stage he once occupied with Team Spirit before his January 2025 loan move. The 18-year-old carry player continues to look like the best investment in CIS Dota this season.
Spirit Outlast Aurora in the Second Semifinal
The other upper bracket semifinal between Team Spirit and Aurora Gaming delivered a different texture of series. Spirit opened convincingly, taking map one with the kind of coordinated aggression that Collapse and Larl have turned into a signature. Aurora punched back in game two, leveling the series behind Nightfall’s offlane presence. Game three swung back to Spirit, who closed it out for a 2-1 victory.
Spirit’s path through this tournament has been clinical. A 6-1 group stage (second behind Falcons in Group A), a 2-0 sweep of BetBoom Team in the quarterfinals, and now a semifinal win over Aurora. Yatoro has been characteristically efficient, and the additions of not me at pos 4 and rue at pos 5 after the roster reshuffle earlier this season appear to be paying dividends at exactly the right time.
Aurora drop into the lower bracket, where their margin for error evaporates immediately.
The Upper Bracket Final Is Set: PARIVISION vs Spirit
Two CIS-rooted organizations will contest the upper bracket final of a Tier 1 Dota 2 tournament with $1 million on the line. PARIVISION vs Team Spirit is the headline fixture, and for anyone who has tracked the Eastern European scene over the past twelve months, this matchup carries weight far beyond DreamLeague Season 29.
Spirit and PARIVISION share DNA. Satanic came through Spirit’s system. Puppey, coaching PARIVISION since January, has faced MiLAN’s Spirit in multiple events this season. No[o]ne- has been playing some of the most consistent mid Dota of his long career, and stand-in offlaner Noticed, on loan from Team Yandex, has given this lineup a flexibility in lane assignments that their previous configurations lacked.
Spirit have the head-to-head advantage in 2026 so far, having swept PARIVISION 2-0 in the DreamLeague Season 27 upper bracket semifinals. Whether Puppey and his players have enough adjustments left in the tank to flip that script will define the tournament’s final weekend.
Lower Bracket Carnage: NAVI Fall, PlayTime Rise
The lower bracket delivered its own drama on Day 3. PlayTime, the Peruvian squad that fought through tiebreakers just to reach the playoffs, eliminated Natus Vincere with a 2-1 reverse sweep. NAVI took the opening map in 57 minutes, looked in control, and then watched PlayTime rip off two consecutive victories. Maximo “Wits” Orozco Alza anchored PlayTime’s comeback with an average 12.7-2.7-12.3 K-D-A across the series.
For NAVI, the exit stings. They topped Group B with a 6-1 record, lost to Aurora 1-2 in the upper bracket quarterfinals, and then failed to recover in the lower bracket. Their tournament ended in 9th-12th place, a finish that falls well short of expectations for a team that looked like genuine contenders during the group phase. The EWC 2026 qualification implications are significant: NAVI needed strong EPT points from this event, and 375 points from a bottom-four finish is not what their season plan required.
The Day 2 lower bracket results (May 20) had already thinned the field. Tundra Esports reverse-swept Virtus.pro 2-1, Xtreme Gaming eliminated Team Liquid 2-1 in a marathon series that included a 74-minute deciding game, and BetBoom Team edged out Vici Gaming 2-1 behind gpk’s 29-14-39 K-D-A line. VP, Liquid, and Vici all departed in 9th-12th place with $30,000 and 375 EPT points.
Today’s Schedule: Friday, May 22 (All Times CEST)
The bracket narrows further today with three matches confirmed:
| Time (CEST) | Match | Round | Stage |
| 12:00 | Tundra Esports vs Xtreme Gaming | Lower Bracket Round 2 | Elimination |
| 15:30 | BetBoom Team vs PlayTime | Lower Bracket Round 2 | Elimination |
| 19:00 | TBD vs TBD | Lower Bracket Quarterfinals | Elimination |
Tundra and Xtreme Gaming open the day in what amounts to a battle of survivors. Tundra scraped through the Group B tiebreakers, lost to Falcons in the upper bracket, and then needed a reverse sweep to survive VP. Xtreme Gaming started from the lower bracket’s basement after finishing 6th in Group B and have already knocked out Team Liquid. Both teams are playing for survival and for critical EPT points toward Esports World Cup 2026 qualification.
The afternoon slot pits BetBoom against PlayTime, and this one carries particular weight. BetBoom Team are among the squads fighting to climb the EPT leaderboard for EWC 2026, and a loss here would put them in a desperate position for the rest of the season. PlayTime, riding high after eliminating NAVI, have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
The evening’s lower bracket quarterfinal will feature the winner of Tundra/XG against Aurora Gaming, who dropped from the upper bracket after their semifinal loss to Spirit.
Updated Bracket Snapshot
| Stage | Match | Date / Time (CEST) | Status |
| Upper Bracket Final | PARIVISION vs Team Spirit | TBD | Pending |
| Lower Bracket R2 | Tundra Esports vs Xtreme Gaming | May 22, 12:00 | Today |
| Lower Bracket R2 | BetBoom Team vs PlayTime | May 22, 15:30 | Today |
| Lower Bracket QF | Aurora Gaming vs Tundra/XG winner | May 22, 19:00 | Today |
| Lower Bracket QF | Team Falcons vs BB/PlayTime winner | May 23, 12:00 | Tomorrow |
Eliminated: Virtus.pro, Team Liquid, Vici Gaming, Natus Vincere, ex-HEROIC, GamerLegion, Nigma Galaxy, REKONIX
The CIS Bracket Takeover
Step back and look at the DreamLeague Season 29 bracket from altitude. The upper bracket final features two CIS-captained teams. Puppey’s fingerprints are on one side; Spirit’s institutional machine runs the other. Satanic, a Russian teenager on loan from Spirit, just eliminated the reigning TI champions. No[o]ne-, a player many had written off after his mid-2024 slump, is anchoring a midlane that hasn’t lost confidence in a single series this tournament.
PARIVISION’s run at this event tells a story that the broader Dota 2 DreamLeague 2026 circuit keeps hinting at. The CIS region’s middle tier has compressed into the top tier. Organizations like PARIVISION, built around a mix of experienced veterans and young talent with Puppey providing the strategic backbone, can now challenge anyone. Their DreamLeague Season 29 upper bracket results are not a fluke. This team finished top three at DreamLeague Season 27, top four at Birmingham. The consistency is the message.
Falcons will have their chance to respond through the lower bracket. ATF and Malr1ne have been through deeper runs from worse positions. But the PARIVISION Falcons upset has shifted the tournament’s center of gravity, and the momentum now belongs to the teams that adapted fastest to the playoff stage.
The road to the grand final on Sunday runs through CIS territory. For everyone else, it’s a question of survival.
