Orangutan were 10th of 16 on day one, and they have finished second in Group A

Halfway through Thursday afternoon Orangutan were 10th of 16 in Group A, closer to being knocked out of the PUBG Mobile World Cup than to qualifying from it. They have finished second. India’s first team at this World Cup ended the group stage on 91 points, behind only Pakistan’s 4Thrives, and they go straight to the Grand Finals in Paris next week without playing the Survival Stage.

Two chicken dinners, 24 hours apart

The turn started with the last game of day one. Orangutan won it on Miramar with 10 kills, worth 20 points in a single match, and climbed from 10th to sixth. That still left them two points outside the top five overnight.

Then they won the first game of day two as well. Match seven on Rondo went their way with 11 finishes, a second Chicken Dinner inside 24 hours, and by the end of match eight they were not chasing the group any more. They were leading it, on 80 points.

Match seven was worth 21 points and match eight another 14. Then the scoring dried up: five, nothing at all, and three across matches nine, 10 and 11. It did not matter, because the two big games had already built the cushion. They went into the last match of the group on 88 points, with two wins, 41 placement points and 47 elimination points behind them.

The last game they did not need

Match 12 on Miramar was where the rest of the group did its damage. Orangutan added three points and stayed second. Aurora Gaming took eight to finish third on 90 and Team Flash nine to finish fourth on 89, and between them they pushed Nigma Galaxy from third down to fifth on a night Nigma managed one point. ULF Esports had the biggest last game of anyone, 18 points, and it carried them from 10th to sixth without getting them over the line.

So the top five reads 4Thrives on 107, Orangutan on 91, Aurora on 90, Team Flash on 89 and Nigma Galaxy on 88. Three points covered second to fifth. Eight kept Orangutan clear of another week of qualifying.

What second place actually saves them

The top five in each group go to the Grand Finals on 14, 15 and 16 August. Sixth to 13th drop into the Survival Stage on 11 and 12 August, where 16 teams play another 12 matches for the last six places. The bottom three in each group are gone, which this year means XForce Reject, ThunderTalk Gaming and Gaming Stars out of Group A. It is the first World Cup to eliminate anyone before the finals.

The rest is the smaller part of what they have saved. Twelve more matches against teams with nothing to lose is twelve more matches of showing 15 opponents exactly how you rotate and where you like to end up. Orangutan get to keep that to themselves until 14 August.

A World Cup in Paris, with three million dollars on it

PMWC 2026 is running at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles as part of the Esports World Cup, which moved from Riyadh to Paris in May. Thirty-two teams are split into two groups of 16, each playing 12 matches, with three million dollars across the event: 1.148 million for the group stage, 152,000 for the Survival Stage and 1.7 million for the Grand Finals.

4Thrives, the group winners, are worth watching too. The Pakistani roster won the PUBG Mobile Global Open in Jakarta in June, and they took Group A by 16 points without winning a single one of the 12 matches. Their 107 points came from 80 eliminations and the habit of always being alive late.

GodLike start on Saturday

India’s other team has not played a game yet. GodLike Esports, the reigning BMPS champions, open when Group B begins on 8 August, facing the same 12 matches and the same top-five cutoff. This is the first PUBG Mobile World Cup with two Indian teams in it, and the first of them has cleared the hardest part of it already.

Orangutan spent most of day one looking like a team that would go home early. They are in the Grand Finals with a week to prepare.

Keep up with India’s run in Paris