The short version

  • OG beat Team Falcons 2-0 in Group B of 1win Essence II on Saturday, August 1, 2026 — a clean Bo2 sweep, no maps dropped
  • Falcons are the reigning TI champions, having won The International 2025, and hold a direct invite to TI 2026
  • Game one was a marathon of nearly 90 minutes; game two closed out in roughly 32
  • OG are returning to TI for the first time since 2022, having qualified through the Southeast Asia regional with an all-Filipino roster — Natsumi, Yopaj-, Raven, TIMS and skem, coached by 343
  • 1win Essence II: online, run by BASED ESPORTS, July 30 – August 5, 2026, $200,000 prize pool ($100K / $50K / $22.5K for the top three)
  • Nine of the ten teams in the field are TI 2026 participants — MOUZ is the only one that didn’t qualify
  • It’s the last competitive event before The International, and the first real look at the meta after patch 7.41e landed July 30
  • TI 2026: Swiss group stage August 13–16, main event August 20–23 in Shanghai

The last tournament before The International is supposed to be where the favorites look like favorites. Instead, the reigning champions got swept by a team that hasn’t been to a TI since 2022.

What happened

OG took Team Falcons 2-0 in Group B of 1win Essence II on August 1, winning both games of the Bo2 and dropping nothing. The first game was an absolute slog — pushing ninety minutes, the longest game of the tournament to that point — and the second was closed out in about a third of that time.

It’s worth being precise about what this is and isn’t. This was a group stage Bo2 in an online tournament, not a bracket elimination, and Falcons were not knocked out of anything — the group stage is still running through the week, and both teams remain live in the event. What it is, though, is the reigning world champions losing a series without taking a game off a team most brackets would have had them beating comfortably.

Who OG actually are now

The OG name carries two Aegises, but this is not that roster, and it hasn’t been for years. The organization missed The International entirely from 2023 onward, and the team that just beat Falcons got to TI 2026 through the Southeast Asia qualifier — an all-Filipino lineup of Natsumi, Yopaj-, Raven, TIMS and skem, with 343 coaching. They took the SEA regional grand final 3-1.

That’s the context that makes this result more than a scoreline: OG’s first TI campaign in four years, and one of their last competitive series before Shanghai, and they used it to sweep the defending champions. Falcons, meanwhile, are running the roster that won TI 2025 — skiter, Malr1ne, ATF, Cr1t- and Sneyking — the same core that has been remarkably stable through the whole cycle.

What 1win Essence II is

BASED ESPORTS is running the event online from July 30 to August 5, with a $200,000 prize pool that pays $100,000 to the winner, $50,000 for second and $22,500 for third. Ten teams are split into two round-robin groups of five, with everything played as Bo2 — a 2-0 is worth two points, a 1-1 splits a point each way. The top two from each group go into the upper bracket of a double-elimination playoff, third and fourth drop to the lower bracket, and the bottom team in each group is out. Playoff series are Bo3 with a Bo5 grand final.

The field is essentially a TI preview: Team Falcons, BetBoom, Team Liquid, 1win Team, LGD Gaming, Vici Gaming, Nigma Galaxy, OG, GamerLegion and MOUZ — nine of which are headed to Shanghai. MOUZ is the exception, and they’re playing Supream^ as a stand-in for MidOne. Elsewhere in the field, Nigma Galaxy have SumaiL back, in what’s been reported as potentially his final TI campaign. BetBoom came in as the favorites on the back of a runner-up finish at the Esports World Cup.

Why it matters

Timing is what gives this result its weight. 1win Essence II is the last event standing between these teams and The International, and it started the day patch 7.41e dropped — the pre-TI patch that touched 56 heroes, killed Divine Rapier’s spell-amp stacking and recalibrated the entire Immortal bracket. Nobody has solved this meta yet. Everything happening on these servers right now is teams finding out what’s actually good with two weeks to spare, which makes the results noisier than usual and also more interesting than usual.

Read it as a form check rather than a prophecy. Pre-TI tournaments have a long history of producing champions who then go out in the group stage, and Bo2 group games are exactly where a team can afford to experiment and lose. But if you’re looking for a reason to pay attention to a returning OG in Shanghai, they just gave you one, and they gave it to you at the expense of the team everyone else has to beat.

The International 2026 group stage opens August 13, with the main event running August 20–23 at Shanghai’s Oriental Sports Center.

Sources: DLTV — Team Falcons 0-2 OG, 1win Essence II, Hawk Live — Team Falcons vs OG, GosuGamers — 1win Essence II offers one final look at teams before The International 2026 begins, GosuGamers — OG have qualified for The International 2026, returning to the championship after four years, Liquipedia — 1win Essence II, Liquipedia — The International 2026