VALORANT Champions 2025 Group B preview: Upset heaven for Fnatic and MIBR?

VALORANT Champions 2025 is right around the corner, with 16 of the best teams across the VCT competing for its $2.25m (~£1.66m) prize pool.

Esports Insider’s second deep dive into this year’s competitors takes a look at Group B, featuring Bilibili Gaming, Rex Regum Qeon (RRQ), Fnatic and MIBR. With each competitor having its fair share of challenges this year, these four volatile variables undoubtedly make fan pick’ems more difficult, but also increase the likelihood of upsets.

Before diving into Group B, don’t forget to catch up on Esports Insider’s VALORANT Champions Group A preview about Paper Rex, GIANTX, Sentinels and XLG Esports.

The group’s highest seed, Bilibili Gaming (BLG), finds itself matched against three opponents that could all feasibly topple the VCT China Stage 2 champions. Although the Chinese team has been among the top performers in its region this year, it has arguably stayed below its full potential until the later parts of the season.

In prior VCT China seasons and its two previous Champions appearances in 2022 and 2023, BLG became known for its explosive playstyle spearheaded by the roster’s duelist Wang ‘whz’ Haozhe.

However, the start of the 2025 season saw BLG adopt more systematic macro gameplay that is preferred by Western teams. Given the roster’s underperformance regionally and at Masters Toronto, placing 9th-10th, there was an argument that the new playstyle did not suit BLG’s players.

During Stage 2, though, the team has seemingly found a middle ground which balances its signature fast-paced chaos with methodical macro game plans. 

While it remains to be seen whether this newfound look can be competitive on VALORANT’s biggest global stage, BLG certainly has the firepower to surprise its first opponent, MIBR, on September 15th and set itself up for a deep tournament run.

The story of Group B’s second seed, Rex Regum Qeon (RRQ), is fairly similar to BLG’s, with the VCT Pacific Stage 2 runner-up navigating different strategic approaches. In RRQ’s case, the pain point was this year’s ever-changing meta, especially regarding Tejo.

The initiator was particularly crucial to RRQ’s rise during VCT Pacific Stage 1. To illustrate this, the Pacific team lost both Kickoff matches in January using Tejo-less team compositions and then won Stage 1 when VCT teams, including RRQ, discovered Tejo’s strength.

To RRQ’s demise, Tejo received his infamous ‘agent-killing’ nerf ahead of Masters Toronto. What followed was the team’s early elimination from the tournament, likely caused by the return to team compositions without the agent.

However, RRQ learnt from these disappointments to conclude its Stage 2 regional run with a newly shaped identity. Instead of merely aligning with agent line-ups from global VCT role models, RRQ has developed its own comfort team comps. The team has experimented a lot with double-duelist combinations centred around Waylay and has even found success with a Tejo comp on Ascent. This style of play helped RRQ navigate a gruelling lower-bracket VCT Pacific Stage 2 playoff run, before ultimately falling to an impressive Paper Rex team.

Despite the roster’s inconsistency throughout the year, RRQ’s stress-proven coaching staff might have prepared just the right strategy to out-play its first opponent, Fnatic, on September 15th and redeem itself on the international stage.

As the only organisation to qualify for every VALORANT Champions event so far, Fnatic brings its long-standing legacy and experience to Paris. For several years, the team was considered a cut above the rest of the EMEA region.

Although the roster missed out on the first 2025 Masters competition in Bangkok, Fnatic was once again EMEA’s last hope at Masters Toronto, making it to the Grand Final before losing to Pacific’s Paper Rex. 

Still, the once glaring gap between the UK-based team and its fellow VCT EMEA competitors has been shrinking. At the same time, Fnatic’s strength appears to be stagnating.

Nothing seems to prove this theory more than the team’s Stage 2 run. After a strong Group Stage performance, Fnatic experienced two consecutive upsets, first against BBL Esports (1-2), followed by GIANTX (0-2), and was eliminated early from the Playoffs. The roster still secured its Champions spot via VCT Points, but it was a demoralising conclusion nonetheless.

To make matters worse, the new map pool takes away Fnatic’s best map, Icebox, while Lotus, arguably its second-worst map, remains.

So why does Fnatic still have a pretty good shot at making it out of this Group Stage? Well, despite all its weaknesses, this is an efficiently-managed roster led by in-game leader (IGL) Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett with high-fragging potential across the board from the rest of the roster.

Moreover, Group Stage matches are only best-of-threes (BO3s), meaning that Fnatic can likely avoid its weakest maps until later parts of the tournament. In this group of shaky teams, Fnatic might just have the experience and adaptability to make it out alive.

The final team of Group B is VCT Americas’ fourth seed, MIBR. The Brazilian organisation first made waves last year with the signing of 2022 Champions winner and duelist legend, Erick ‘aspas’ Santos.

Joined by two hard-hitting rookies and former NRG player Andrew ‘Verno’ Maust, the new MIBR roster reached third place at VCT Kickoff and Stage 1. At Masters Toronto, however, the team hit a brick wall. Similar to RRQ, MIBR recognised the need to transition away from Tejo in the post-Tejo meta but could not keep up with the team comp innovations made by other Toronto contestants. 

After an early elimination from the event, MIBR trialled different roster members on Yoru as a key component of popular double-duelist comps. This led MIBR to lose out on a Playoffs spot in Stage 2. It was only thanks to its VCT Points and an early playoff elimination from rival KRÜ Esports that MIBR qualified for Champions.

Despite this bitter end to the 2025 VCT Americas season, MIBR did look better in its final Stage 2 matches. Aspas seems to have accepted the Yoru role in the current roster, and missing out on Stage 2 Playoffs should have given him extra time to improve on the agent in the shadows.

Considering the volatility of the higher seeds in Group B, MIBR fans can still hope for an upset and a potential Playoffs appearance by their favourite team.

Fans can tune into VALORANT Champions Paris 2025 via VCT’s official Twitch and YouTube channels, starting on September 12th.