Against all odds, EMEA's Stage 1 Group Stage has come to an end. Enduring long games riddled with tech pauses and a week's delay, Team Heretics Team Heretics Europe Rank #5 Wo0t Mert Alkan RieNs Enes Ecirli benjyfishy Benjamin David Fish ComeBack Berkcan Şentürk Boo Ričardas Lukaševičius and Team Liquid Team Liquid Europe Rank #7 purp0 Semyon Borchev wayne Wayne Chang MiniBoo Dominykas Lukaševičius nAts Ayaz Akhmetshin kamo Kamil Frąckowiak have emerged atop their groups.

Here's how the final matches of EMEA shaped up:

With all playoff spots being locked up in week four, this final week of play was purely for seeding. FNATIC FNATIC Europe Rank #1 crashies Austin Roberts Boaster Jake Howlett kaajak Kajetan Haremski Veqaj Sylvain Pattyn Alfajer Emir Ali Beder and Team Heretics fought for the top seed of Group Alpha, while three teams were competing for the top seed of Group Omega.

The week started out with an insane match between the two Turkish organizations. Right from the get-go of Ascent, BBL Esports BBL Esports Europe Rank #3 Crewen Ali Eren Sargin Lar0k Yusuf Kaan Kanber Loita Utku Kart Rosé Eren Erzan lovers rock Umut Pekdoğan and FUT Esports FUT Esports Europe Rank #10 xeus Doğan Gözgen MrFaliN Furkan Yeğen yetujey Eray Budak KROSTALY Okan Alaçam baha Baha Gözmen AtaKaptan Ata Tan were scrapping it out, brawling non-stop with each other. Eventually, BBL pulled ahead to an 11-6 lead, but FUT fought back with six rounds in a row to reach match point. Unable to close it out, however, BBL took the final round of regulation to bring the game to overtime.

A roller coaster of a round where a LewN 4k turns into a qRaxs 1v3.

Once overtime started, the game devolved into utter madness. The two teams traded attack rounds for a while, until BBL found themselves up 16-15 in a 3v1, the map all but secured. yetujey , however, unwilling to let the map end, clutched out the 1v3 to keep it going.

It all could have ended here, but yetujey decided otherwise.

From there, the two teams were locked in an endless dance, neither willing to give in to the other. There were few comfortable round wins, each coming down to the wire, with players racking up seven total clutches occurred throughout the overtime. The round scores kept tallying higher, nothing but sheer willpower keeping the players going.

Eventually, the game started to break longest map records. First, it surpassed the VCT EMEA record of 38 rounds, achieved in EMEA's very first league match between KOI KOI Inactive and Natus Vincere Natus Vincere Europe Rank #12 sociablEE Volkan Yonal Filu Dawid Czarnecki Shao Andrey Kiprsky Ruxic Uğur Güç hiro Emirhan Kat , as well as in 2024's Kickoff match between Karmine Corp Karmine Corp Europe Rank #25 dos9 Zhumagali Dastan LewN Burak Alkan sheydos Bogdan Naumov Avez Hazem Khaled SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin and none other than FUT Esports. Then, it passed the partnership era record, set earlier this year with Nongshim RedForce Nongshim RedForce Korea Rank #1 Xross Jeonghwan (정환) Rb Goo Sang-min (구상민) Francis Kim Mu-bin (김무빈) Dambi Lee Hyuk-kyu (이혁규) Ivy Park Sung-hyeon (박성현) 's 22-20 victory over Rex Regum Qeon Rex Regum Qeon Asia-Pacific Rank #7 Monyet Cahya Nugraha xffero David Monangin Jemkin Maksim Batorov Kushy Bryan Carlos Setiawan crazyguy Ngô Công Anh . Finally, it took the title of longest match since the inception of VCT, overtaking the 24-22 match between FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix Inactive SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin Zyppan Pontus Eek ANGE1 Kyrylo Karasov Shao Andrey Kiprsky ardiis Ardis Svarenieks and forZe forZe Inactive SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin Art1st Vyacheslav Lyadnov Coffee Nikita Antsypirovich way back in 2021.

After passing the final record, BBL decided that enough was enough, and at last won the map on round 48, finishing on a score of 25-23. By the end of the madness, three players had surpassed 40 kills, and eight of the ten players had more than 30 kills.

The historic map comes to an end at last.

While this map reached insane heights, it failed to surpass that of B4 Esports vs. No2B e-sports way back in 2020. Featuring names like pANcada , v1nny , and xand , the 30-28 scoreline reached stands as the longest recorded map in competitive Valorant.

Inevitably, map two of BBL vs. FUT could never match the first, though it told much of the same story in regulation. BBL ran away with a lead before FUT started to crawl back. This time, however, BBL closed it out before reaching overtime to finish Stage 1 with a 4-1 record.

While BBL and FUT's record-breaking map took a whole two hours, it somehow would not be the longest map of the week. Team Liquid vs. Karmine Corp's first map of Split took a whopping three hours to complete. Even more shockingly, the map was a 13-6 stomp for Liquid. The length came not from gameplay, but from the incessant tech pauses that plagued the map. After each of the first five rounds of the map, there was a break for a tech pause.

kamo earns a tech nap after a beautiful play.

Eventually, the issue seemed to be resolved, and the rest of the map was played out almost normally, save for one round that had to be rolled back.

A silly nAts clutch amidst the chaos.

While the map was complete, the tech issues persisted, and with at least three more maps left to be played, the matches were postponed to the following week.

Players and coaches from Karmine Corp contested the competitive integrity of the map, citing unequally enforced rules, but the map result was upheld by Riot, and the following week would start with Liquid up 1-0.

A week later, the match would continue, and Karmine Corp came out with a vengeance, handedly taking the second map of Icebox. However, Team Liquid's Waylay comp on Lotus rolled KC, and they secured first seed in Group Omega. This left KC as the fourth seed.

Finally came the long anticipated match of FNATIC against Team Heretics. What was set up to be the clash of two of the best teams in the region ended up as a rather one-sided affair for Heretics. Despite the best efforts of kaajak , Heretics took a quick 2-0 to lock in as the first seed in Group Alpha.

kaajak was one of FNATIC's few bright spots today.

As for the other three games, Team Vitality Team Vitality Europe Rank #13 Jamppi Elias Olkkonen PROFEK Dawid Święć Derke Nikita Sirmitev Chronicle Timofey Khromov Sayonara Ștefan Mîtcu continue to slide down the rankings as the Kickoff winners took a shocking 2-0 loss to NAVI, making them the fourth seed from Group Alpha, and placing them in the lower bracket of playoffs. KOI and GIANTX GIANTX Europe Rank #2 Cloud Kirill Nehozhin grubinho Grzegorz Ryczko westside Miłosz Duda Flickless Karel Maeckelbergh ara Hanceriuc Eduard-George both found their first win of Stage 1, leaving Apeks Apeks Inactive the only winless EMEA team left in the year.

Playoffs will begin next Thursday with the first four rounds:

Upper Round 1 (May 8):

Lower Round 1 (May 9):

Upper Semifinals (May 10):

Lower Round 2 (May 11):