On Monday GALA went 13/2/12 against Shopify Rebellion. On Tuesday his team, Beijing JDG Esports, played two games against LGD Gaming and didn't take a dragon, a Baron or an inhibitor in either of them. LGD won 20-7 and 16-8. JDG are hosting the knockout stage of the 2026 Demacia Cup Global Invitational, and they're now one Bo3 away from missing it.
October 6 belonged to the six teams at 1-1 in the Swiss stage, and it sent HANJIN BRION, Team Vitality and LGD through to the last eight alongside kt Rolster, BNK FEARX and Xi'an Team WE. Six of the eight places are now taken. The LCK is the first region to get every one of its teams through, Europe has its first quarterfinalist, and nobody was eliminated, because Tuesday's three losers all get one more series.
BRION win a series they started without a dragon
HANJIN BRION 2-1 Natus Vincere (14-23, 15-12, 19-4). NAVI won Game 1, the longest map of the day, and they won it on objectives: all five dragons that fell were theirs, the Elder among them according to Leaguepedia, along with eight towers to BRION's six. Maynter went 6/2/9 on Rumble and SamD 7/3/11 on Ezreal. It was also a first for this tournament. Before Tuesday, European and North American teams had played five maps against LCK or LPL opposition here and lost all five.
Game 2 looked similar on the objective count and ended the other way. NAVI took four dragons to none again and the only Baron, yet BRION finished with seven towers to four and the win. Neither of our sources records which fight decided it, so we'll leave that part alone. What the numbers do say is that BRION went two full games without a dragon, nine to nil against them, and came out of those games level at 1-1.
Then Game 3 was over in a little more than 24 minutes, the shortest map of the day: eleven towers to none, four dragons to none, and a combined 13/0/15 from Casting, GIDEON and Roamer.
Roamer is our player of the series. He had exactly six kills in every game, 6/4/3 on Locke in the loss and then 6/2/9 on Orianna and 6/0/6 on Sylas, for 18/6/18 overall; Leaguepedia lists him as the broadcast MVP of both BRION wins. There's a domestic footnote here too. BRION lost back-to-back 3-2 series to kt Rolster and BNK FEARX in the LCK play-in, and all three of those teams are now in the last eight of the same tournament.
NAVI are 3-3 in maps over three match days. Round 4 on Thursday is their last chance.
Vitality are in, and the fine print matters
Team Vitality 2-0 RED Canids (19-9, 17-10). Vitality lost their opening Bo1 to BNK FEARX on Saturday and have won four maps in a row since. Game 1 finished ten towers to two with a gold lead of 65,398 to 49,498; Naak Nako went 5/1/9 on Jayce, Carzzy 6/1/9 on Caitlyn, and Lyncas took Qiyana into the jungle for 4/1/8. In Game 2 RED led the dragon count 2-1 and still didn't take a single tower in 33 minutes, while Vitality took eleven, two Barons and three inhibitors.
That second game is where Naak Nako put Vayne in the top lane and went 6/0/2. He finished the series at 11/1/11 and Carzzy at 12/4/16, and Leaguepedia gives them one broadcast MVP each, which makes three for Naak Nako in two days. The line that doesn't fit is in the middle: FIESTA went 5/8/8 across the two games, including 1/4/3 on Viktor in the second.
RED have Aegis in the jungle at this event. Sheepesports reported before the tournament that their starter STEPZ would miss it over visa issues, and Aegis has played every RED map here. Since beating NAVI on opening day they've lost four maps out of four, to kt Rolster and to Vitality, and they're still alive.
So Europe has a team in the quarterfinals, and here's the fine print. Through 15 series, the tournament by region: LCK 6-1, LPL 5-3, LEC 3-3, CBLOL 1-2, LCP 0-2, LCS 0-4.
Europe's three series wins came against GAM Esports, FlyQuest and RED Canids. Vitality are in the last eight without having beaten an LCK or LPL team; their one meeting with either region was that Bo1 against BNK FEARX, and they lost it. Against Korean and Chinese opposition, the European and North American teams are 0-5 in series at this tournament, and NAVI's Game 1 on Tuesday is the only map any of them has won.
None of that takes the place away from Vitality, who won the two series the Swiss format put in front of them and did it without dropping a map. It does tell you what the quarterfinals will ask. At least five of the eight teams there will be from the LCK or LPL, and it'll be six if JDG get through on Thursday.
The hosts, one day on
LGD Gaming 2-0 Beijing JDG Esports (20-7, 16-8). Round 3 had no protection against same-region pairings, and it produced an all-LPL series that was never close. Game 1 was done in under 25 minutes at nine towers to three. Game 2 ran about three minutes longer and LGD took all four dragons in it. Over the two games that's seven dragons to none and both Barons, against a JDG side whose only neutral objectives all series were two void grubs, going by Leaguepedia's scoreboard.
Tangyuan ran it from the mid lane: 7/1/7 on Syndra, 6/0/7 on Orianna, 13/1/14 for the series and the broadcast MVP of both games per Leaguepedia. Heng went 10/3/18 in the jungle and Burdol played Varus in the top lane in Game 2, on the same day Naak Nako played Vayne there. Our favourite line of the day, though, is Crisp's 0/3/35. On Karma in Game 1 he went 0/1/20 and LGD had 20 kills, so he had a hand in every one of them.
For JDG, the comparison with Monday is hard to avoid. GALA followed that 13/2/12 with 2/6/2 on Kai'Sa and 2/5/2 on Yunara, 4/11/4 in all. In Game 2 Angel's Viktor dealt 53% of his team's damage to champions in a 16-8 defeat, which says plenty about where the rest of it wasn't coming from.
One draft note, as a description of Tuesday and nothing more. In all three series, Lucian with Milio and Yunara with Lulu went unpicked in Game 1 and then lined up against each other in Game 2. Vitality and LGD won with the Lucian lane, BRION with the Yunara one, and since each of those games went to the team that took the series anyway, it tells you little about the lanes themselves.
Where the Swiss stage stands
Two series wins put a team in the knockout stage. Three teams got there on October 4 at 2-0, and three more joined them on Tuesday at 2-1.
NAVI, JDG and RED Canids are 1-2 and go to Round 4. The last three teams, GAM Esports, FlyQuest and Shopify Rebellion, are 0-2 and haven't won a map between them. They didn't play on Tuesday. Their Round 3 is a single round robin, every series a Bo3, and only the team with the best record in it moves on while the other two go home.
It all happens on Wednesday, October 7 (times in UTC):
- 07:00, GAM Esports vs FlyQuest
- 09:00, Shopify Rebellion vs GAM Esports
- 11:00, FlyQuest vs Shopify Rebellion
GAM play the first two series back to back and Shopify Rebellion the last two, with FlyQuest getting a series off in between. Whoever comes out of that group still hasn't qualified for anything: a team that started 0-2 has to win the round robin and then a Round 4 series a day later to reach Beijing.
What comes next
Round 4 is on Thursday, October 8, with Bo3 series at 09:00 and 11:00 UTC. NAVI, JDG, RED Canids and the round robin winner play for the last two knockout places, and the two losers are out. No pairings yet. They hadn't been published when we wrote this, and with one of the four teams still unknown they can't be until Wednesday's group is done.
The knockout stage starts on October 12 in Beijing, single elimination and Bo5 throughout, with the quarterfinals spread over two days. Insider Gaming's pre-tournament format guide says the bracket comes from a random draw with no regional protection; we haven't seen the draw itself announced, so treat that as the plan and not yet the bracket.
Six teams already know they'll be in it. The hosts find out on Thursday.