NAVI's pre-Major bootcamp in Cologne is in its second day on May 24 — the team checked into the ESL Cologne studio block on May 23 for eight in-person practice days running through May 30. The booking was made through ESL directly, which gives the team access to a tournament-mirror server setup and the same network path the Major broadcast will run on. The facility is the same one NAVI used in the week leading up to their 2024 Cologne run.
Roster intact, no stand-in
All five — Ihor 'w0nderful' Zhdanov, Valerii 'b1t' Vakhovskyi, Justinas 'jL' Lekavicius, Kirill 'iM' Mikhailov and captain Aleksandr 'Aleksib' Kostyliev — are on the trip. Coach Andrii 'B1ad3' Horodenskyi rejoined after a short post-Atlanta family break (the same trip that included Aleksib's grandmother's funeral in Kyiv earlier this month). No academy substitute on the booking — this is the championship five.
Cache is the practice focus
The Atlanta playoff run leaned heavily on three maps — Mirage (13-3 in the grand final), Nuke, and Inferno. The map pool at Cologne carries Cache as the new pick following its May 14 reintroduction, and Cache is the one map NAVI played zero times at IEM Atlanta. Bootcamp pacing reportedly puts two of the eight days on Cache scrim blocks exclusively, with the other six rotating through the existing seven-map pool.
Schedule from here to the bracket
The bootcamp closes on May 30, leaving two clear days before the official ESL pre-Major media day on June 2. Stage 1 of the Major opens June 2 with the eight Challengers Swiss matchups (paiN vs FlyQuest the headline opener); Stage 2 (Legends) opens June 6 with Stage 1 qualifiers feeding in. NAVI's Stage 2 opener pairing is revealed June 5 once Stage 1 closes.
