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poLANd.tf 2026 Group B Preview
posted in News
Benpl
1 hour ago

allen’s workshop

  • voxtec
  • 0mger
  • phnx
  • kosuke
  • ympo
  • Lucky

After ending 2025 with a quick exit in the first round of the lower bracket of ÜBERFEST, allen’s workshop came into 2026 with a renewed motivation for online and offline TF2. In the offseason, Lucky made his return to the team after an almost 2 year hiatus as he replaced wildpiggie on medic in anticipation of the upcoming ETF2L Season 51.

alien workshop, the online version of allen’s workshop, expected they would have to fight through the qualifier gauntlet for the right to a seat at the table in Premiership. But fortune was in their favour as /for fence dropped from the season at the last moment, meaning that all four of the budding qualifier teams were granted a direct invite into Prem. This sequence of lucky breaks continued as DIRTY MAGGOTS scout voxtec became available for pickup mid-season, and instantly joined the team as pocket scout for the remaining four online matches plus LAN.

They eventually ended the season on 9 points in 6th position, a respectable showing for the team’s first stint in Premiership together. Although there was a gap in class between themselves and some of the teams jostling for the top positions online, allen’s workshop hope to account for this in Poland with pure LAN buff, something that every one of their players has been able to turn on at a moment’s notice. Will this flair and clutch factor be enough for them to punch up at some of the stronger teams in Łódź, and will we be treated to the usual catalogue of workshop frags in the post-LAN fragvid?

ChudsXLAN

  • SchmitShot
  • kejhalb
  • Lupus
  • jyrkas
  • kul
  • dft

18 months on from RGL Invite being “Filled With Chuds”, a new Chud team takes shape across the Atlantic. The European variant, ChudsXLAN, smashed their way through the LAN qualifiers without dropping a single map, comfortably locking in the top qualifier seed.

Five of the six members of ChudsXLAN were rostered on the recently crowned ETF2L D1 silver medalists CUBISM. Ironically their sixth player, kejhalb, played for chimney busters who beat CUBISM in the grand final. He now switches allegiance to join the Chuds, who have amalgamated a very strong roster of top D1 talent. They were clearly too strong for the rest of the qualifier teams, how will ChudsXLAN fare against the rest of the poLANd.tf 2026 cohort?

kek minoin samurai

  • flick
  • snh
  • silves
  • bl0ke
  • mak
  • EoN

In 2025 The Bloodsail Buccaneers sailed far and wide, so far in fact that they landed in Japan and integrated with the Samurai. In the journey across the world, they lost both pieces of their previous scout duo, sail and junnu, but were able to find replacements in snh and flick just in time for the 51st main ETF2L season. The rest of the roster remained, EoN un-tempted by the return of Venomcrest and the explosive classes were clearly gelling to well together to consider changes.

The Buccaneers previously earned themselves a bronze medal in ETF2L Season 50 before crashing and burning to a 5th-6th place finish at Überfest. During this period they were incredibly strong on Product, beating both /for fence and DIRTY MAGGOTS on it in ETF2L playoffs with help from a junnu permasniper and silves moving onto the vacated scout role. In 2026 this product form continues with snh instead, and it is responsible for MANDEM’s only map loss in league play of Season 51. Overall despite the strong early start, the honeymoon period of the new roster faded over the season and it resulted in them losing to The Ender Pearls in the first round of playoffs. Will the kek minoin samurai be able to rekindle their impressive early form in an offline setting, and perhaps even get revenge on their eternal rivals DIRTY MAGGOTS?

LANkle Monitor

  • Uncle Sam
  • Flak
  • Theseus
  • Royal
  • air
  • Luvr

On Friday 20th February, just one week before the opening round of matches in Poland, legendary NA superteam froyotech announced that they would no longer be able to participate at the LAN they had been working towards for the past six months. The TF2 world was in shock, but quickly the point of focus turned to the question of who would be their replacement. The obvious heirs to this vacant team spot were lastminute.com and Seer Coincidence, the two teams that failed to make it through the qualifiers, but both of these teams had since folded not expecting to have the chance to play at LAN. Fortunately, six keen spectator ticket holders (including some unexpected OCE representation in air and Theseus) were keen to sign up to the competition and fill the gap just days before the first games. Outmatched, outgunned, outprepared, LANkle Monitor bravely stand before some of the best teams in the world. What a story it would be if they managed to squeeze out some results despite all odds being stacked against them.

MANDEM

  • balder
  • zoey
  • haunts
  • ry4n
  • Fancy
  • june

MANDEM has been a major force in Premiership in the past three years, making its debut in ETF2L Season 41. The team was haunted by some sort of curse, placing 3rd in S45, 46, and poLANd.tf 2024. MANDEM finally escaped that placement in S47 with a 2-0 Grand Final victory against SKEDDA. Following playoff defeats in S48 and S49 to /for fence and a loss in the poLANd.tf 2025 Grand Final against Witness Gaming, MANDEM ended up skipping S50 and ÜBERFEST 2025. The break, at first, seemed to not have hurt the team’s performance at all, with a strong showing during the group stage of Season 51. But their playoff run started with an upset after a gruelling Upper Bracket Final loss to DIRTY MAGGOTS. Dropping down to the Lower Bracket Final, their opponent The Ender Pearls proved to be no big threat and the team made it into the Grand Final, but MANDEM still could not beat DM in their rematch.

Featuring players such as former tf2easy Medic june and ETF2L’s Player and Pocket Scout of the Season balder, the team is also bringing ÜBERFEST 2024 winner ry4n on Roamer, who is joined on the flank by zoey. While dmoule was standing in on Pocket for most of S51, haunts returned for the S51 playoffs and will also play at LAN. poLANd.tf 2026 will mark the first offline appearance of Fancy, the Demoman player who, whilst having an outstanding performance in online matches, has been called out for mysteriously being absent from any LANs. Even after their S51 Grand Final loss, MANDEM still looks to be a very promising candidate to win poLANd.tf 2026.

TFTV: How is your team going to approach this LAN after your recent Grand Final loss against DM? Are they your rival team to beat, or is your focus set on Witness Gaming or one of the other teams?

zoey: Most of us haven’t played a season since last Poland lan and some even longer and so our mindset on the season was to play it for practice. Especially since playoffs was continuous overtime and we haven’t played it before. Our goal going into lan is for sure to try and win it, even after we lost finals. People will call us “chokers”, that’s honestly a good thing, maybe they’ll underestimate us. There are many different teams going to lan with different styles of play so we’re definitely focusing on each game individually at a time and not straight ahead at witness.

TFTV: This will be Fancy’s first time playing at a TF2 LAN and a lot of eyes are going to be on him. Do you think the pressure will get to him at all?

zoey: Fancy for his age is very mature, maybe not to the outside eye but inside the team he handles pressure probably the best. Personally I think he’ll perform very well but it’s not all on him. It’s a team game and if we’re not doing our part then you can’t blame him for it.

PD2T

  • Kyy
  • Irppa
  • blurri
  • fundo
  • murje
  • Muffinz

Puolangan divisioonan 2 tykistörykmentti, the Second Artillery Regiment of the Polish Division, is the latest in a chain of teams emerging from the Finnish community. Online, they have played as Lentavat Sirkkelit, emerging from hibernation once a year to straddle the border between divisions 2 and 1, and as Lentavat Sirkkelit they were the last Finnish representatives at LAN: Copenhagen Games 2019, from which Scout duo Kyy and irppa return to stake their claim.

Arriving as the third out of four teams from the online qualifier makes PD2T look like easy pickings, a team that should go out on day one. Don’t count them out yet. In qualifying, they played three matches against three opponents. Seer Coincidence were blown away on Process and couldn’t quite hang on on Sunshine. ChudsXLAN were one step above: Process was a back-and-forth nailbiter but on Product they were outclassed. eepy nappers made it close on Process once again before dominating Sunshine, but on Product the Finns laid the ghost of the Chuds to rest and took the map and series. On Friday, only one team will be eliminated from each group: one good result is all they need to make it to the playoffs.

The White Lotus

  • chris
  • slemnish
  • highfive
  • jayhyunpae
  • logan
  • skeez

The White Lotus arrive in Poland with an outrageous mix of some of the strongest players in RGL history. Much of the pre-tournament narratives surrounding EU against NA were understandably centred around b4nny’s froyotech superteam that unfortunately had to pull out of poLANd.tf 2026 at short notice, but there is a genuine case for this White Lotus roster being at least as strong as the aforementioned dropouts.

ex-G6 demoman and PFD 2025 runner up logan is the only member of the team that was not present in mamas boy’s’ silver medal finish at the most recent RGL LAN. He will have his ex-G6 teammate chris on hand as his pocket scout, who returns to competition following one of the shortest retirements in competitive TF2 history. chris’ scout partner will be slemnish, whose latest LAN outing was his 4th place finish in Denver, but previously he earned silver at i65 with Ascent. Also on said Ascent roster were medic skeez and roamer jay who round out the roster, the latter’s i69 victory being the only S-tier LAN win across this roster’s achievements. Two-time RGL Invite winner and captain highfive rounds out the roster.

Every player on The White Lotus has won RGL Invite multiple times, and none of them are strangers to intercontinental competition. The entire team barring highfive have even played in grand finals of such LANs before, but only have one gold medal to show for it. Perhaps after this weekend, there will be a few more medals in The White Lotus’ already glowing catalogue.

With contributions from JMaxchill, lacy avenue and Samus.

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