NAVI and Aurora booked their spots in the ESL Pro League Season 23 Grand Final after convincing showing in their semifinal wins.
NAVI defeated FUT 2-1 in a series where the first map was a stomp – a 10-2 half lead on Mirage, translated into a 13-5 final result. FUT managed to respond on Ancient with a 13-11 win to force a decider, but NAVI closed the series comfortably on the third map with amazing performances from iM and makazze, securing their place in the final.
Aurora’s semifinal against Astralis followed a similar script. Astralis opened the series with a narrow win on Nuke, but Aurora responded hard on their pick, Dust2 – walking over Astralis with a 13-2 win, and then closed the decider with 13-10 on Inferno to complete the reverse-sweep and reach the Grand Final. Wicadia and woxic seem to be in a great form at the playoffs, and will probably be the ones to watch in the final.
Both teams are looking to be in an excellent shape coming into this matchup. NAVI have won four of their last five series, including the playoff victories over MongolZ and FUT. Aurora also won four out of their last five, with their playoff run including wins against Legacy and Astralis.
The head-to-head history between these teams heavily favors NAVI. Aurora haven’t won since March 2025, back when they were still competing under the Eternal Fire banner. Since then, NAVI have won every series between them, including the most recent clashes at Thunderpick World Championship 2025, and PGL Cluj-Napoca 2026 group stages. Both matches ended 2-1, which suggests that this one could go long too.
Since it’s a best-of-five series, the vetoes will be much more straightforward here – NAVI bans Overpass 95% of the time, while Aurora bans Ancient. Other than that, it’s a fairly neutral battleground. The map order matters big time in a BO5, but not this time, since both teams’ win percentages are very similar, except maybe Anubis where Aurora seems to be more comfortable playing than NAVI, and on the other side Nuke is the map where NAVI have found more success than Aurora.
Taking everything into account, this looks like an even matchup on paper, but NAVI still holds the edge in the head-to-head, and have shown they know how to close these series against Aurora on many occasions. If they manage to control the pace on their stronger maps, and avoid giving Aurora too much space on Dust2 and Anubis, they should be able to snatch their first trophy of 2026.
Final prediction: NAVI 3-1.
