The group stage of China Ascension 2025 has concluded. The four teams still standing will face off in playoffs beginning Oct. 16, where they will vie for one open spot in VCT CN in the VCT CN Arena in Shanghai, China.

Teams

Although DRG qualified for Champions Paris, their fellow Ascension squad Xi Lai Gaming Xi Lai Gaming China Rank #2 Viva Lifan Ran (冉立凡) NoMan James Man Rarga Arthur Churyumov happywei Deng Minwei (邓闵维) coconut Colin Patrick Chung (钟弘祖) placing higher at Champions forced DRG to return to Ascension to defend their VCT spot against China's best tier 2 squads, which were determined via circuit points accumulated over the course of the season.

Four teams qualified to playoffs:

Four teams were eliminated in the group stage:

Group A: Dragon Ranger Gaming cruises through, Octagonal Disposition Gaming comes out on top in rematch decider

The event kicked off with group A's opening matches, where Zhu Chao Gaming defeated Octagonal Disposition Gaming in 2-1 fashion while DRG sailed past Thunder Gaming in a clean 2-0.

SpiritZ1 cleans up TG in their opening match with four quick kills.

From there, DRG comfortably qualified for playoffs with a 2-0 over ZCG, going undefeated in maps without letting their opponents reach double digits in a single one. All five DRG members ranked top ten by K:D across the group stage, but it was SpiritZ1 who dominated individually, putting up a tournament-leading 307 ACS and 1.10 KPR.

Down in the lower bracket, ODG battled for survival with a 2-1 win over TG. The group decider was a rematch between ODG and ZCG that came down to the wire, but ODG eked out the final map 15-13 to win the series 2-1.

Group B: Rare Atom returns to Ascension playoffs, Any Questions Gaming seizes final playoff berth

Rare Atom was the first team to make it out of group B by defeating Any Questions Gaming and Ambitious Legend Gaming. While they didn't drop a map, they had close shaves against ALG in the upper bracket with the series going 13-11 and 15-13 in their favor. Led statistically by zhe and Satoshi with KPRs of 0.94 and 0.86 respectively, the two-time Ascension finalists will seek to finally clear the last hurdle to VCT in their third consecutive playoffs run.

The final team to qualify for playoffs was AQG, who defeated CCG 2-0 and ALG 2-1 to secure their spot. Champions 2024 winner S1Mon leads the squad by the numbers, currently ranking third in the event by ACS and KPR with 246 ACS and 0.89 KPR while playing multiple roles.

S1mon slips through the smoke and wipes out CCG.

Format and Schedule

The playoffs format will be a standard four-team double-elimination bracket. The schedule for the remaining matches of China Ascension is listed below.

Broadcast

The China Ascension playoffs will be broadcasted live on official VCT CN channels. Project Horizon also provides a community-led English stream for the event. The main streams for VCT CN and Project Horizon are: