Gentle Mates beat HOTU to win IstanbuLAN 2026
Gentle Mates have won the IstanbuLAN 2026, picking up the title in Turkey after taking down HOTU in the final of the $25,000 tournament. It was a reverse sweep from the Spanish team in the final as they had to dig deep to take the win and alex and co. head home with a prize money of $12,500. HOTU's second place finish nets them a prize money of $6,250.
The grand final kicked off on HOTU's pick of Anubis as a strong defensive half from n0rb3r7 and co. saw them go 9-3 up as mizu and kAlash had a 13 and 14 kill half respectively. A clean T side saw them seal a comfortable 13-3 win to draw first blood.
Gentle Mates kicked off their pick of Nuke with the T pistol and there was no stopping the Spaniards as they were all over HOTU, going 10-0 up before the Russian team found a round thanks to a mizu triple. It was another double from mizu along with dukefissura in the final round of the half that saw HOTU end the half with two with Gentle Mates starting with a 10-2 lead. Two was all HOTU could manage as MartinezSa's 22 kill performance saw Gentle Mates fight back and tie up the grand final following a big 13-2 win.
Gentle Mates picked up the CT pistol on the decider on Overpass but it was HOTU with the early streak on their T side, going 4-2 up before dav1g and mopoz brought Gentle Mates back into the game to see the Spanish team close out their CT half with six in a row to go 8-4 up.
A quick Monster hit saw Gentle Mates lock in both pistols on Overpass but a force buy saw HOTU pick up a big force buy. HOTU though were unable to build on that. A sausol 1v2 saw Gentle Mates hit map, match and championship point and despite HOTU getting it close to a two round game, it was a dav1g 1v1 clutch won to time that saw Gentle Mates hold on for a 13-10 win to reverse sweep the series 2-1.
Gentle Mates earlier in the day had brushed aside magic in their semi-final match, picking up 13-6 wins on Ancient and Inferno to make their way to the final. While Gentle Mates had beaten magic in their semi-final game, HOTU took down 9INE in straight maps, going 13-8 on 9INE's pick of Anubis and 13-9 on their own pick of Dust2 with n0rb3r7 having a strong series with a 1.72 rating in the match.
Gentle MatesHOTU| Gentle Mates |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 3.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Antonio 'MartinezSa' Martinez |
52 - 34 | +18 | 87.7 | 74.1% | 1.48 |
| Alejandro 'alex' Masanet |
38 - 39 | -1 | 84.5 | 66.7% | 1.18 |
| Alejandro 'mopoz' Fernández-Quejo Cano |
34 - 40 | -6 | 84.9 | 66.7% | 1.09 |
| David 'dav1g' Granado Bermudo |
33 - 41 | -8 | 73.5 | 68.5% | 1.07 |
| Pere 'sausol' Solsona Saumell |
30 - 37 | -7 | 58.7 | 70.4% | 0.85 |
| HOTU |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 3.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Dmitry 'mizu' Kondratev |
52 - 33 | +19 | 90.9 | 81.5% | 1.35 |
 Suleımen 'dukefissura' Orazaly |
43 - 38 | +5 | 94.3 | 72.2% | 1.20 |
| Altair 'kAlash' Askarov |
38 - 37 | +1 | 68.9 | 74.1% | 0.96 |
| David 'n0rb3r7' Danielyan |
29 - 42 | -13 | 71.4 | 64.8% | 0.73 |
| Kim 'frontales' Argunov |
25 - 38 | -13 | 50.5 | 70.4% | 0.67 |
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