Day 2 brought two best-of-fives to Daejeon, with very different things on the line. T1 and Karmine Corp arrived unbeaten, and the winner would take the direct route to the bracket stage. Team Liquid and had already lost once, so their series was an elimination match — whoever dropped it became the first team out of .
T1 won games one and three almost the same way. Lucian–Milio tore into Varus–Neeko on the level-two spikes, and KC made it worse — they kept fighting through T1's strongest early windows instead of respecting them. Keria's game-one Pyke punished the mistake over and over, nearly every hook landing, KC's jungle drowning in vision. Oner read the win condition each time and leaned on it. KC's bot lane never surfaced.
KC came closest in game two. T1 won the 2v2 again — Busio misplayed his Camille in lane — but he answered on the map, roaming hard enough to hand KC a 4k gold lead at 20 minutes. However, T1 have been here all year. One clean teamfight wiped the deficit and flipped the game.
The frustration for Karmine Corp is that their solo lanes delivered. Kyeahoo won his lanes against Faker, especially across games two and three, two solo kills on Cassiopeia in the second; Ont he topside, Canna kept every matchup quiet and turned a big Gnar game into a solo kill on Doran. But it counted for nothing. T1 fought better, snowballed harder, and either punished KC's early mistakes or out-executed them when KC got it right.
The series belonged to Keria, a masterclass from the support position. He said as much afterwards:
I've become the greatest support of all time.
And he's right. On the other side, Caliste and Busio had a series to forget — though they ran into the best bot lane in the world right now. Peyz finished +1681 Gold Diff @15 and +438 XP Diff @15 on Caliste across the series, a gap that tells the story.
Team Liquid closed the bracket's first elimination match in three, and DCG became the first team out of MSI 2026. The pattern repeated all series: DCG built leads in games one and three and had no idea what to do with them. TL were simply better at the moments that decide games — around objectives, around the teamfight. Quid backed the win up with a series of his own, deathless on Akali in game one for an 8/0/1 line.
DCG's real problem sits in the bot lane, some distance off the level of the field, the mechanical errors piling up. Credit where it's due — they keep defending a cornered base, the same trick they pulled to survive against KC, and they leaned on it again and again here. It bought time. It didn't change the result.
This was not a flawless Liquid either. They slipped more than once — CoreJJ kept dying on entry fights with Renata in game 3 — and never quite turned the series into a real stomp. But they didn't need to because they were clearly the better side throughout.
T1 sit in the Play-Ins final, waiting. Their opponent comes out of Tuesday's series between Karmine Corp and Team Liquid on Wednesday — EU against NA. The two met at KC's first international outing, First Stand 2025, and Liquid won. CoreJJ made sure everyone remembered:
Last time when we met, we won [...] it's gonna be the same tomorrow.
Two rival regions, teams that are both second seeds, with a Play-Ins final place on the line. The hype writes itself.
