Thirty-two teams from five continents chase a $500,000 pool, and the home crowd’s real hope is a title defence by Pakistan’s 4Thrives, who won Season 1 in Jakarta
LAHORE: The PUBG Mobile Global Open (PMGO) began its Season 2 group stage in Lahore on Tuesday, the first time an official global PUBG Mobile esports event has been staged in Pakistan, with 16 teams in Group A opening a six-day contest for a $500,000 prize pool.
The tournament, organised by PUBG Mobile Esports for publishers Krafton and Level Infinite, gathers 32 squads that came through nine regional finals across Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas, plus open qualifiers and wildcard routes. The champion on October 25 will also collect 150 points towards the PUBG Mobile Global Championship (PMGC) in Istanbul later this year.
For Lahore, the week is a test of whether a city better known for hosting cricket can also run an international esports broadcast at global standard, and whether a Pakistani team can win a world-level title in front of its own fans.
Day one, Group A
Group A played six matches on Tuesday afternoon, starting at 4 p.m. Pakistan time, across three maps: one on Rondo, three on Erangel and two on Miramar. The line-up mixed Middle Eastern heavyweights Geekay Esports and AlUla Club with Southeast Asia’s Bigetron by Vitality, Türkiye’s S2G Esports and Selibon, South Asian qualifiers Horaa Esports and Nepal’s Trained to Kill, and Pakistan’s LF Esports, who came through the PUBG Mobile Pakistan Open.
Five matches in, S2G Esports led the group on 55 points, a single point ahead of Bigetron, according to a live points table published by SportsDunia. Horaa were third on 45, followed by AK Gold on 42, and Old Not and 4K Esports on 40 each. LF Esports sat seventh on 34 points with 21 eliminations, just outside the automatic qualification places, with the final Miramar match still to be played.
Five different teams had won the first five matches, a spread that underlined how little separated the field: 4K Esports took the opener on Rondo, Old Not, Influence Rage and Bigetron won on Erangel, and Horaa claimed the first Miramar game with 25 points.
How a team reaches the final
The six highest-placed teams in each group go straight to the Grand Finals on October 24 and 25. Teams finishing seventh to fourteenth drop into a Survival Stage on Thursday, where 16 sides play six more matches for the last four places. The bottom two in each group are eliminated.
Season 2 also brings two format changes. Ties that decide a qualification place in the group and Survival stages will now be settled by a best-of-three, four-against-four Team Deathmatch on the close-quarters Warehouse map, with the first team to 15 eliminations taking a round. In the Grand Finals, a themed showmatch before Match 7 will decide which team bans one of three maps for a possible 13th match, which is played only if no team has clinched the title under the tournament’s Smash Rule. Organisers say the aim is to make it more likely that a champion is crowned by a last-team-standing finish rather than on accumulated points.
4Thrives return as champions
Group B plays on Wednesday, and that is where much of the home interest lies. It includes 4Thrives Esports, the Walee-owned Pakistani team that won PMGO 2026 Season 1 in Jakarta on June 7 with 122 points, three “chicken dinners” and a $62,500 winner’s cheque. That win made 4Thrives the first Pakistani side to lift a global-level PUBG Mobile title.
The team has since finished sixth at the PUBG Mobile World Cup in Paris and was named to represent Pakistan at the Asian Games, according to its owners. Lahore has already seen it win at home: 4Thrives took the PMGO South Asia finals at the Expo Centre Lahore in May with 242 points, ahead of Horaa Esports and Trained to Kill.
Group B also features a second Pakistan Open qualifier, 777 Esports, alongside Türkiye’s ULF Esports, who finished runners-up to 4Thrives in Jakarta, and Mongolia’s The MongolZ.
The Lahore stakes
Pakistan’s esports scene has grown largely on smartphones, the device most young Pakistanis own, and PUBG Mobile has been its biggest title despite a temporary nationwide ban in 2020. A global event in Lahore gives local players exposure to international broadcast production, referees and sponsors without the cost of travelling abroad, and offers the city another international fixture in a busy month that also includes a cricket tri-series at Gaddafi Stadium.
The government has been pitching digital skills and tech exports as a growth engine, with ICT exports jumping 19.7% in recent official data, and Punjab has been widening youth sport through programmes such as its province-wide Youth Games. Esports sits between the two, though it still lacks a formal regulatory home in Pakistan.
Phone makers chase the gamer market
Infinix is the tournament’s official smartphone partner with its GT 50 Pro, which the company says carries the industry’s largest HydroFlow liquid-cooling system, a feature aimed at keeping frame rates stable during long sessions. The phone, launched in Indonesia in April, runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 chip with a 6.78-inch 144Hz AMOLED display and pressure-sensitive shoulder triggers, according to GSMArena. Infinix did not give Pakistani pricing in its release.
The sponsorship continues a strategy the brand has followed for several seasons, after it backed earlier tournaments with the GT 10 Pro in 2024. Pakistan’s mid-range phone market is highly price-sensitive, and gaming tournaments have become one of the main ways handset makers reach buyers aged under 30.
Group B takes the stage on Wednesday, followed by the Survival Stage on Thursday and the Grand Finals over the weekend. Matches are streamed on PUBG Mobile Esports’ official YouTube, Facebook and Twitch channels.
If 4Thrives defend their crown on Sunday, Lahore will have watched a Pakistani team win a global title in front of a home crowd, something no PUBG Mobile event in the country has offered before.
Leave a Reply