Counter Strike 2: paiN to replace Aurora at the BLAST Open London..

BLAST.tv announced on Friday through its official X (Twitter) account that Brazilian team paiN will replace the all-Turkish team Aurora at the BLAST Open London.

According to Aurora's official Twitter account, the team has withdrawn from BLAST London due to a scheduling conflict. However, they still plan to participate in the online BLAST Bounty Season 2, which runs from August 5th to 10th, and the five-day Esports World Cup, which begins on August 20th.

Notably, with this announcement, Aurora becomes the fourth team to withdraw from the tournament due to scheduling conflicts, following Astralis, Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP), and Falcons.

Aurora has been plagued by misfortunes recently. They had a difficult start to the second half of the year and were forced to have xfl0ud stand-in at the Intel Extreme Masters Cologne due to a "personal family matter" involving their Entry-fragger XANTARES.

However, without XANTARES, Aurora could only finish in the top 12 at the Intel Extreme Masters Cologne.

Although Aurora publicly stated that XANTARES was forced to withdraw due to "personal family matters," online speculation circulated that his withdrawal was related to the recent investigation into illegal gambling by influencers in Turkey.

Aurora's withdrawal also presented paiN with a prime opportunity to prove themselves as the top Counter Strike 2 team in South America on the global stage.

From April to August 2024, paiN, having won numerous B- and C-tier tournaments, had experienced a period of declining performances since the Perfect World Shanghai Major.

It wasn't until this June, when they reached the semifinals of the BLAST Austin Major and placed between top three and fifth, that their performances began to improve.

This outstanding performances also boosted paiN's VRS ranking to 16th place.

The BLAST Open London will begin with an online stage on August 27, 2025, and will culminate in the offline finals at the OVO Wembley Arena in London, UK, from September 5-7. Sixteen teams will compete for a $330,000 prize pool.

The tournament will feature a single-elimination Bo3 format to determine a single spot in the online group stage.

BLAST has announced the 12 teams participating in the online stage, with an additional four teams set to advance from the BLAST Rising qualifiers in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, taking place from August 1-3.

The confirmed BLAST London Open teams are as follows:

• Vitality

• MOUZ

• Spirit

• The MongolZ

• G2

• NAVI

• GamerLegion (GL)

• FaZe

• HEROIC

• Virtus.pro (VP)

• FURIA

• PaiN