Team Vitality gets back on track with ESL Pro League: Season 22 victory

2025 has been an immense year for Team Vitality in the Counter-Strike 2 world, as the French organisation won IEM Katowice, ESL Pro League: Season 21, BLAST Open Spring 2025, IEM Melbourne, an Intel Grand Slam, IEM Dallas, and even BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025. That's a spree of victories most teams could only dream about, but Team Vitality has its sights set on more, which is why the past few months have been surprising.

Team Vitality has been off-form. It has struggled to lift major trophies in the past three big events, begging the question about whether the team's time in the spotlight is over. Clearly it isn't.

Over the weekend, Team Vitality lifted the ESL Pro League: Season 22 trophy after defeating Team Falcons in the final in a convincing 3-0 fashion. This is a big result, not just because it's another trophy for the cabinet, and not even because of the healthy $100,000 that comes with it, but because it means Team Vitality are back in the lead to be the next Intel Grand Slam champion.

Yep, following this and IEM Dallas in May, the French team has two of the four necessary ESL-hosted major victories under its belt, and it now has seven opportunities to win two more before anyone else beats them to the punch to once again be crowned Grand Slam champion and reap the $1 million prize pool that comes with that.

Do you think Team Vitality will defend its Grand Slam title?