Eternal Fire and TYLOO forfeit headline Valve's final Major cut-off

Valve's November Valve Regional Standings update has confirmed the 32 teams heading to the PGL Major Singapore 2026, which begins on 24 November. The qualification race had already been tracked near-hourly by HLTV, Udknud and Mischief in the weeks before the cutoff, Dust2.us reported.

Three teams from the Americas region made the cut this time: Liquid, M80 and Wildcard, all entering at Stage One. Wildcard took the final Americas berth with a second-place finish at FiReSPORTS LAST CHANCE over the weekend, Dust2.us reported.

The outlet noted that an NA-majority side has not reached the Top Eight at a Major since the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, a target all three sides now carry into Singapore.

Asia's five places were effectively settled by a single forfeit. TYLOO withdrew from a HyperX Retake Season 13 quarter-final in Lisbon on cutoff day, a result that left their own Major invite in doubt while confirming the rest of the APAC picture; neither TYLOO nor Lynn Vision is expected to play again before the deadline, according to Esports Insider.

The Lisbon event, run by Hyped and PEW PEW from 29 October to 1 November, was a Valve Tier 2 tournament featuring 13 teams and a €12,187.50 prize pool; TYLOO finished joint fifth to eighth. IEM Beijing, by contrast, is an S-Tier, Valve Tier 1 event run by ESL from 2 to 8 November with 16 teams competing for $1,250,000.

Natus Vincere also withdrew from the Lisbon bracket, with organisers citing the same Beijing commitment for both teams, Esports Insider reported. NAVI's own Major qualification was unaffected, since they had been registered past the 19 October withdrawal deadline. In Europe, fnatic were left out of the field entirely after the final weekend's results went against them.

Eternal Fire's route to Singapore came through a late comeback rather than a forfeit. The Turkish roster of MisteM, regali, soulfly, Kvem and jottAAA secured their Stage One invite only after the 2 November cutoff, following two LAN titles across October that initially still left a Major place looking out of reach, Esports.net News reported.

The first of those came at DraculaN Season 7 in Romania, where Eternal Fire beat SINNERS 2-1 in the grand final of a 24-team, $35,000 event running 19 to 23 October, banking $14,000 for the win.

A Major invite still looked distant after that result. StarLadder's Stake Ranked Episode 5 in Barcelona changed the picture: the $100,000, eight-team A-Tier LAN ran from 27 to 30 October, and Eternal Fire opened with a 2-1 defeat to MIBR before grinding through the lower bracket.

Their first lower-bracket win needed three maps against a Nemesis line-up fielding two stand-ins, followed by a win over BIG. The decisive tie came against Astralis, who had brought in Jakob "jabbi" Nygaard as a stand-in for cmtry from the event's second day, a swap that meant cmtry would not reach the five matches needed to count toward Astralis' own roster for VRS purposes.

Eternal Fire dropped the opening map, Dust II, 10-13 against Astralis but took Ancient 13-7 and Cache 13-8 to advance; two of their five players, Kvem and MisteM, are former NA competitors now representing the Turkish organisation.

With the November VRS release finalised, all 32 invites are locked for Singapore, and Eternal Fire, Wildcard, Liquid and M80 now turn to the Stage One bracket that begins the tournament proper on 24 November.