MOUZ, Astralis and NIP win as BLAST Bounty Season 2 Opens

Favorites Mostly Deliver on Opening Day

Elite Counter-Strike returned from its summer player break on July 21 as BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 2 kicked off, and for the most part the top seeds did what top seeds are supposed to do. MOUZ, Astralis, and Ninjas in Pyjamas all walked away with 2-0 victories, according to reporting by HLTV. The one genuine surprise came from Wildcard, who dismantled Alliance in a result that nobody had quite penciled in.

The event’s distinctive format, in which lower-ranked teams select their own opponents, naturally produces a handful of David versus Goliath situations each round. On day one, Goliath mostly won. Mostly.

MOUZ Survive a Scare in PR’s First Official Match

The most closely watched result of the day was MOUZ’s 2-0 over Nuclear TigeRES, notable because it marked the competitive debut of new signing Oldrich “PR” Novy. The Czechs looked authoritative on Ancient, building momentum off a strong offensive showing to take the map with room to spare. Nuke was a different story. Nuclear TigeRES found angles and timings that left MOUZ scrambling for answers, and a third map was starting to look very possible.

What changed the series was a single remarkable round from Lotan “Spinx” Giladi. According to HLTV, Spinx pulled out a Deagle and converted a three-kill play at a moment when MOUZ were in a rough economic position. That spark got the team back on track, and they closed out Nuke to finish the series 2-0. Not always pretty, but the result is the result.

Astralis Needed a Reverse Sweep to Get Past Nemesis

Astralis had their own nervy afternoon. Nemesis, the lower-ranked challenger, picked up a map win on Nuke after Astralis struggled defensively, threatening to turn the match into an actual upset. Instead, Astralis responded on Ancient and Cache to complete a reverse sweep and open their account.

The performances that steadied the ship came from two players in particular. Jakob “jabbi” Nygaard stepped up on Ancient, while Love “phzy” Smidebrant delivered the standout play on Cache, including a stylish one-versus-three clutch that HLTV highlighted in their coverage. Final score: Astralis 2-1 Nemesis, with Nuke going 13-11 in Nemesis’s favor before the favorites reasserted themselves.

NIP Handle M80, Wildcard Hands Alliance a Surprise Loss

Ninjas in Pyjamas arrived at BLAST Bounty carrying some baggage. The team had suffered an early exit from XSE Pro League Guangzhou after returning from the player break, and then dropped a match to Virtus.pro at a BLAST Premier Rising event. Against M80, though, they looked composed. Martin “stavn” Lund was the best player on the server as NIP took Inferno on the strength of their T side, then Kacper “xKacpersky” Gabara closed things out with strong CT-side play on Ancient. A 2-0 result that, per HLTV, felt relatively comfortable throughout.

The upset that will stick in people’s minds came from Wildcard over Alliance. The Swedish roster had recently posted a top-four finish at XSE Pro League Guangzhou and came into the match carrying a 13-map winning streak on Inferno specifically. Wildcard broke that streak without much difficulty and then cruised through Dust2 to complete the 2-0. A notable performance from bobeksde, who grabbed an ace on a play that was apparently meant to be a fake, illustrated the kind of day it was for Alliance.

With the format’s challenger-picks-opponent structure still to run its course in the coming days, there are likely more surprises ahead. Day one just happened to belong mostly to the big names, with Wildcard as the exception that proved the rule.