MENA Madness and Spacestation Stuns in North America | Regional Rundown: Open #4, Part 1

The road to Paris has finally started, and for North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and Middle East and North Africa, respective regional champions have been crowned.

Here we’ll break down the key moments that led to each Championship, including a wild finish in MENA, and game sevens galore in North America.

Oceania - PWR

OCE lost one of its coveted Major and Worlds slots heading into this season, and while many expected Wildcard to capitalize off their momentum from their top 6 finish at Worlds, it was actually PWR (Gus, Fiberr, and Superlachie) that repped their region back in Boston.

The squad had a chance to widen the gap between them and the second place with a regional win, and did just that. They did survive a small scare against Heartless Esports (Bigrooster, Chub, Matthew), fending off a reverse sweep bid, but had a very clean playoff run, dispatching of Take Flyte and C-B Bulldogs and only dropping a game in the process. Then they swept Wildcard in the Grand Finals to take a good first step towards Paris.

Gus at the Boston Major

PWR currently sits in first place, 14 points ahead of the second place Wildcard. The third place C-B Bulldogs are currently the only other team really in the running for Paris or Worlds right now with 37 points (7 behind Wildcard, 21 behind PWR).

Bigrooster, Chub, and Matthew all secured their highest ever placement in an RLCS Regional with an appearance in the Lower Quarterfinals, marking each players’ first time with a 5-6th place finish.

Nerve, who made his RLCS debut relatively recently in RLCS 2024, recorded his fourth straight top 6 finish, playing with Laxin and Kekkles.

Sub-Saharan Africa - Five Fears

Coming into the 2026 Season, there were two main contenders for SSA’s lone Major spot: Five Fears (Gunz, Snowyy, and Tehqoz) and Pioneers (2Die4, LuiisP, and Sweaty). While Pioneers got the best of Five Fears in Open #1 of the season, 5F answered back by rattling off two straight regional wins to qualify for Boston. They continued their momentum from Split #1 with their biggest win over Pioneers to date.

Five Fears only dropped a single game over the entire tournament. This loss came in game 3 of their series with Marine Region in the Upper Semifinals of the Group Stage. In the playoffs, they swept Synthesis, Astronic Esports, and then Pioneers in the Grand Finals.

This tournament saw KCP stumble a bit as well. Astronic stunned SSA’s second place team in game 5 to knock them to the lower bracket and forced them to go undefeated if they wanted a shot at Five Fears.

Tehqoz making his RLCS LAN debut at the Boston Major

5F currently sits well above the rest of the pack with 61 points, the second-most in the entire world (Falcons has 62). Pioneers sit far behind with 47, and the rest of the region currently sits at 25 points or below.

Middle East & North Africa - R8 Esports

In a stunning set of semifinals, MENA’s perennial top two teams in Falcons and Twisted Minds both suffered upsets. Team Stallions (Nush, Trook, and Twiz) started off the Madness with a dominant 4-0 sweep over Twisted Minds (Nwpo, Trk511, M0nkey M00n), and R8 Esports (Abdullah, Ghaazi, and M7md) followed with a 4-1 win over Team Falcons (Dralii, Kiileerrz, and Rw9).

R8 then went the distance to claim the org’s first ever Regional title after a back-and-forth six game series win over Stallions.

Alongside Twiz, Ghaazi and Abdullah made their first career RLCS LAN and World Championship appearances with their Last Chance Qualifier triumph last season. They also made their way past the Play-In Bracket in France with sweeps over FUT Esports and Gen.G Mobil Racing.

With two-thirds of that team still in-tact, they’re once again MENA’s third best squad, and may have enough juice to make it to Paris with this huge regional victory. They just need one more big result to go their way, as Twisted Minds and Falcons making the next two Grand Finals and each winning one open would be enough to knock R8 back into third place.

Abdullah made his first ever Worlds last season with ROC Esports

This marks the first time in the history of the MENA region that one of Trk511, Rw9, or Kiileerrz didn’t play in the Grand Final. It’s also the first regional title for all three R8 Esports players.

R8 Esports is the fifth ever organization to win a MENA Regional, joining Team Falcons, Sandrock Gaming, Rule One, and Twisted Minds.

This is the first time since Spring Regional #3 of the 2022-23 Season that the Team Falcons organization has missed an RLCS Regional Grand Final, and only the 7th time ever in history.

North America - Spacestation Gaming

It was clear that Spacestation needed a bolster following their quick exit from Boston. Diaz, Chonic, and Reveal crashed out of the Major with an 0-3 record in the Group Stage. Following the disappointing result, they traded Chronic out for the recently retired Spacestation star Scrzbbles, now going by Zach.

While people likely expected some growing pains as Zach shook off some rust, you couldn’t tell last Sunday, as SSG went 3-0 in Swiss with the likes of Shopify Rebellion, Gen.G Mobil1, and FUT Esports.

Spacestation picked up where they left off the next weekend, cruising through the GSL stage with wins over KrakenSeas (Zineel, Juice, and Taroco) and M80 (Noly, Mech, and Life).

Elsewhere, NRG and Shopify Rebellion clashed in the Upper Bracket, which ended with the defending World Champs dispatching of them in 3 games.

FUT Esports, now with Chronic and Jstn on the roster alongside Cheese, won two big games against Virtus.Pro and Dignitas to advance to the playoffs through uppers.

Strictly Business (Crispy, Aqua, and RelatingWave) became the fourth team in the playoff Upper Bracket when they took down Gen.G Mobil1 Racing in the opening match, and then won over “The Immigrants” to go 2-0 on the day.

North America had its fair share of surprise early exits as well. Virtus.Pro, a promising upstart team that made a shocking run to the Boston Major, were eliminated before the playoffs at the hands of Shopify Rebellion.

Gen.G Mobil1 Racing, who underperformed last split and traded Jstn out for Frosty, found themselves eliminated early with a loss to the rookie sensations on M80.

Finally Dignitas, who looked to be back in form in the last two regionals of last split with the addition of Bora, suffered a crushing defeat to “1” (Royales, Justuszzz, and Matter).

The upsets were looking poised to continue to rock the region on Saturday, as Next2Nu Esports (PNDH, Aris, and Percy) jumped out to an early 3-1 series lead against Shopify Rebellion. It wasn’t until Firstkiller and Friends scored the 0 second game winner in game 7 that Rebellion finally had the upper hand.

Then, later in the day, Spacestation Gaming jumped out to an early 3-0 lead against NRG, who came roaring back to beat them in game 7. NRG blanked the SSG offense in three of the final four games to advance to the top 4.

Diaz scored 0.97 goals per game in Open #4, good for the fourth most in North America

On Sunday, it was NRG this time that had a huge 3-0 advantage. While Shopify’s late series heroics once again pushed the other team to the brink of a historic collapse, NRG managed to hold off the comeback in game 7 and advanced ahead to try and claim a three-peat of North American regionals.

Spacestation took down former teammate Chronic and FUT Esports in six games to challenge NRG for the crown, and then closed that series out on Neo Tokyo to give Zach a regional win in his return to the RLCS. This victory is the Utah organization’s fourth ever NA regional championship, and just the second since Season X. It’s also Diaz’s first (3v3) RLCS Regional win.