TOP ESPORTS Reach the Worlds 2026 Knockouts; Six Teams Play for the Last Three Spots
GAME MODE Staff·Oct 31, 2026· 2m read
TOP ESPORTS joined T1, Invictus Gaming, Gen.G and Dplus KIA on October 29. Six teams at 2-2 play Saturday’s Round 5 for the last three Knockout Stage spots.
TOP ESPORTS are the fifth team into the Worlds 2026 Knockout Stage. They beat BILIBILI GAMING 2-1 on Thursday, October 29, to finish the Swiss Stage at 3-1, level with T1 and Invictus Gaming, who clinched their spots a day earlier. Gen.G and Dplus KIA went through unbeaten at 3-0.
Three places are left. Six teams sit at 2-2 and play best-of-three matches on Saturday, October 31, and the three winners qualify at 3-2. The records below are as of Saturday morning, before Round 5.
Who went out on Thursday and Friday
Round 4’s 1-2 pool sent three teams home. Karmine Corp beat CTBC Flying Oyster 2-0 on Thursday, and on Friday, October 30, LOS beat Team Liquid Alienware 2-1 and Hanwha Life Esports beat G2 Esports 2-0.
CTBC Flying Oyster, Team Liquid Alienware and G2 Esports are out at 1-3. They join Anyone’s Legend and Team Secret Whales, who went out at 0-3 earlier in the week.
Swiss Stage records before Round 5
The Swiss Stage is five rounds. Three match wins send a team to the Knockout Stage and three losses eliminate it. From Round 2 on, teams only face opponents with the same record, and never one they’ve already played.
| Record | Teams | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 3-0 | Gen.G Esports (GEN), Dplus KIA (DK) | Qualified |
| 3-1 | T1, Invictus Gaming (IG), TOP ESPORTS (TES) | Qualified |
| 2-2 | Movistar KOI (MKOI), LYON, BILIBILI GAMING (BLG), Karmine Corp (KC), LOS, Hanwha Life Esports (HLE) | Play in Round 5; the winners qualify |
| 1-3 | CTBC Flying Oyster (CFO), Team Liquid Alienware (TLAW), G2 Esports (G2) | Eliminated |
| 0-3 | Anyone’s Legend (AL), Team Secret Whales (TSW) | Eliminated |
Saturday’s Round 5, match by match
All three are best-of-three, and times are CDT.
- 12 PM: Movistar KOI vs Karmine Corp
- 3 PM: LOS vs LYON
- 6 PM: Hanwha Life Esports vs BILIBILI GAMING
How the quarterfinal draw works
The quarterfinal draw on October 31 randomly pairs the two 3-0 teams, Gen.G and Dplus KIA, with two of the 3-2 teams. The remaining four teams are drawn into the other two matches, so T1, Invictus Gaming and TOP ESPORTS can’t face Gen.G or Dplus KIA in the quarterfinals.
Every Knockout Stage match is a best-of-five. The stage runs November 3-14 in Allen, Texas, and Brooklyn, New York. Quarterfinals on November 3-6 and semifinals on November 7-8 start at 4 PM CST, and the Final is on Saturday, November 14 at 2 PM EST at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
