MOUZ are the first team to have secured a semi-final spot at the V4 Future Sports Festival after finishing at the summit of Group A.

The European mixture, who won last year's edition with two of their current players, began their defense of the title with victories over E-RIVALS and Tricked to top Group A and advance to the last-four stage, which will be played only on Sunday.

Nicolai "⁠HUNDEN⁠" Petersen's charges, who pushed MOUZ to their limit in a long match in which the third map went to double overtime, had begun the day by taking down last year's losing finalists, Virtus.pro, in a two-map series, showing great composure on Mirage as they recovered from a 5-13 deficit - the first of three sensational comebacks that they delivered throughout the day.

The biggest surprise of this first day was the fact that MIBR had to go the full distance to beat local side GAMERZONE, who inflicted the Brazilians' 14th LAN defeat on Inferno in the 16 games played over the last six months.

Ninjas in Pyjamas, who could be attending their final event with Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund, will open the action on Thursday against Polish side adwokacik, headlined by ex-AGO duo Kacper "⁠kaper⁠" Słoma and Grzegorz "⁠SZPERO⁠" Dziamałek. After that, Virtus.pro will fight for their tournament lives against E-RIVALS, with Conor "⁠conoR⁠" McCool looking to build on his impressive showing against MOUZ (1.35 rating).

Below you can find the schedule for Thursday:

11:00 Ninjas in Pyjamas vs. adwokacik
14:00 Virtus.pro vs. E-RIVALS
17:00 MIBR vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas / adwokacik winner
20:00 GAMERZONE vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas / adwokacik loser