BGMS Season 5 starts today without GodLike and Orangutan, and Paris is the reason
The BGMI Masters Series opens its fifth season with 24 teams and a one crore rupee prize pool, and with India’s two PUBG Mobile World Cup teams handed a bye until 21 August.
Aug 10, 2026
The BGMI Masters Series returns today for a fifth season, 24 teams playing for a prize pool of one crore rupees on NODWIN’s LAN stage, running through to a grand final on 4 to 6 September. Two of the most recognisable rosters in Indian BGMI will not be there when it starts, and their absence is the most flattering thing that has happened to the domestic scene in a while.
GodLike and Orangutan are in Paris
Both teams are at the PUBG Mobile World Cup, which is running as part of the Esports World Cup in Paris from 6 to 16 August. Both came through a group stage that ended on Sunday, and both are in the Grand Finals, played from 14 to 16 August with 16 teams and a share of a 3.025 million dollar prize pool. It is the first time India has sent two teams to a PUBG Mobile World Cup.
That is the collision. BGMS League Week 1 runs from today until 13 August. The Bounty Weekend that follows runs from 14 to 16 August, which is the PMWC Grand Finals weekend, hour for hour. There is no version of the calendar where the same players do both.
So NODWIN wrote them a bye. GodLike and Orangutan have been handed direct entry into Super Weekend 1 on 21 August, joining a tournament already 11 days old and taking the full field to 26 teams. It is a sensible fix and an unusual one. A domestic league restructuring its opening fortnight around two of its teams being at a world event is not a problem Indian BGMI had to solve five years ago.
What the first two weeks look like
The 24 teams starting today open with a round-robin league week, from 10 to 13 August. Bounty Weekend follows from 14 to 16, League Week 2 from 17 to 20, and then Super Weekend 1 from 21 to 23, which is where the Paris pair walk in. League Week 3 runs 24 to 27 August, Super Weekend 2 from 28 to 30, the playoffs from 31 August to 2 September, and the grand final over the first weekend of September.
It is a long tournament by domestic standards, close to a month of near-continuous LAN play, and the format has been built to reward teams that stay consistent rather than teams that spike once. That cuts both ways for the late entrants. GodLike and Orangutan arrive fresh from the biggest stage in the game, and they arrive with less runway to climb a table everyone else has been building on since today.
Who is playing
The field starting today has most of the names Indian BGMI viewers turn up for. Team Soul, 8Bit, Revenant XSpark, Reckoning Esports, Team Tamilas, Gladiators Esports, K9 Esports and Nebula Esports are all in, alongside rosters like Apex Gaming, Genesis Esports, Wyld Fangs and Elite Nova.
Four of the 24 came through the TVS Raider Wicked Battles qualifier rather than an invitation, with Santa Esports winning that event. Those four have a fortnight to make the case that the invite list was two names short.
The scheduling problem is the good news
Indian esports has spent years wanting exactly this: enough international relevance that domestic organisers have to work around it. A month ago the story would have been which invited team pulled out. This time the reason two teams are missing the opening stretch is that they are playing for a share of a three million dollar pool in Paris.
Whether the bye works out is a separate question. Coming into a settled league in week three, against teams with two full weeks of matches behind them, is a genuinely hard ask, world cup form or not.