Gentle Mates Gentle Mates Europe Unranked K4DAVRA Thomas Johner RobbieBk Robbie Boerkamp Minny Patrik Hušek Zyppan Pontus Eek Click Haydem Ali have unexpectedly swept Apeks Apeks Europe Unranked florescent Ava Eugene hype Tautvydas Paldavicius MOLSI Michał Łącki AvovA Auni Chahade batujnax Mehmet Batu Özaslan in the grand final of VCT Ascension EMEA, claiming their spot in the VCT EMEA 2024 and 2025.

Apeks were largely favored to reach the VCT EMEA, as the team had only lost one match this year coming into the grand final. Gentle Mates were also dominant regionally, but faced defeat several times and even opened the playoffs with a 2-0 loss.

Not only did Apeks reach the grand final with three of the top five rated players, they did so by dropping just two maps. Gentle Mates lost six maps — four of them in 2-0 losses to title favorites Acend Acend Inactive ALIVE Gilad Hakim musashi Alessio Xhaferi pyrolll Artur Minin cullumx Nikolaj Cullum Andersen chiwa Egor Stepanyuk and Apeks. The Frenchmen got their revenge in the grand final, where they got a 3-0 win over Apeks to take home the Ascension trophy.

Gentle Mates were the least-predicted team to reach the grand final or even win Ascension. Nearly 70% of the VLR.gg Pick ‘Ems predicted Apeks to lift the trophy, compared to just 3.8% for Gentle Mates. Most Pick ‘Ems had M8 drop out of Ascension in the first round of the lower bracket.

Gentle. Mates.

Gentle Mates' win caps off four weeks of Ascension EMEA, which kicked off on June 22 with the Play-Ins stage between the second-best team of each Challengers League. FOKUS FOKUS Europe Unranked hoody Aaro Peltokangas YaBoiLewis Lewis Hughes Mistic James Orfila al0rante Felix Brandl xuss Tselmeg Tsolmon were the only team to come out of the Play-Ins alive, after a 3-1 win against S2G Esports S2G Esports Europe Unranked pAura Melih Karaduran Lava reazy Kaan Ürpek Turko Mehmet Özen DeepMans Yiğithan Kesici in that stage's grand final.

FOKUS joined the nine VCL champions in Ascension's group stage, where the 10 rosters were split in two groups of five. While the Polaris runners-up weren't able to make it out of Group B, the Polaris champions, Apeks, topped that same group in flawless fashion, dropping just one map throughout.

They were trailed by the French champions Gentle Mates, whose only group stage loss was to Apeks. On the other side of the board, Acend and SAW both topped Group A with a 3-1 record. The former got the first seed thanks to winning the tiebreaker. These four teams advanced to the double-elimination playoffs that would promote the first team to the VCT.

Apeks and Acend, largely considered the favorites for the Ascension title, both opened up the playoffs with 2-0 wins. The two later clashed in the upper final, where the former took a 2-1 win to reach the grand final.

Gentle Mates were thrown to the lower bracket by Acend, but the Frenchmen kept their cool. They moved past SAW SAW Inactive Fragger Henrique Correia brk Bruno Ferreira GrTw Tiago Costa Addicted Eduardo Torres Cunha20 David Cunha (2-1) in the first round, and swept Acend (3-0) in the lower final to set up a rematch against Apeks in the grand final.

M8 went against the narrative once again, opening up the championship fight by taking Apeks' Haven pick 13-6. That first map win let them quickly reach match point after finding a close 13-10 win on Ascent. Gentle Mates won the grand final on Pearl with another 13-10, winning the map for the first time to solidify their spot in the VCT EMEA for the next two years.

Somebody should have checked logaN's PC.

While there is no start date confirmed for the VCT's International Leagues in 2024 or 2025, Riot Games has confirmed the leagues will have two splits per year going forward. Gentle Mates will spend two years in the VCT, and will drop back to the French Challengers League in 2026. During their two-year stint, the team will receive similar financial benefits to the partnered rosters, as well as the chance to reach international events.

Gentle Mates' Ascension EMEA win marks the return of Jonathan "TakaS" Paupard and Logan "logaN" Corti — two former DfuseTeam DfuseTeam Inactive hoppY Dylan Aube logaN Logan Corti AKUMAAAAA Alex Lo Bello TakaS Jonathan Paupard rodeN Rodolphe Bianco / Team BDS Team BDS Inactive bramz Bayram Ben Redjeb players — to tier 1. The last time these two played in the VCT was nearly two years ago, when they reached the top six of Stage 3: Challengers 2 under BDS. It also marks the return of the legendary Kévin "Ex6TenZ" Droolans to a tier 1 tactical FPS competition.

TakaS also spent most of 2022 under Karmine Corp Karmine Corp Europe Unranked saadhak Matias Delipetro Avez Hazem Khaled Elite Efe Teber SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin marteen Martin Pátek , but he was dropped near the end of the year as the organization moved to their current partnership roster. He will now have the chance to spend two years playing against KCorp and the other nine partnered rosters.

Gentle Mates are the final team promoted to the VCT across the three International Leagues. BLEED BLEED Inactive were the first team, after a dominant Ascension Pacific run, followed by The Guard The Guard Inactive JonahP Jonah Pulice trent Trent Cairns neT Michael Bernet valyn Jacob Batio tex Ian Botsch just a few hours later in the Americas.