November 12, 2025 | 11:20am
MANILA, Philippines — The country’s top Call of Duty: Mobile (CODM) team, Elevate PuK, finished as runner-up in the 2025 Call of Duty: Mobile World Championship held offline in Katowice, Poland over the weekend.
The 2024 champion, which also achieved the “Golden Road” by winning all major CODM tournaments last year, had been stumbling this year, finishing second during Season 9 of the Garena Masters 2025. Still, the team was determined to defend its title.
Although Elevate’s group stages campaign started slow, conceding a Hardpoint-Hacienda map to China’s OUG, the all-Filipino squad pulled off a three-consecutive-map win to advance to the winner’s match of Group A.
Against Mexico’s UnMythic Dream, which fields Filipino Jose Anton Lorenzo “WardeN” Padilla as a coach, Elevate PuK secured a three-sweep to book a ticket to the playoffs and seize the top seed in Group A.
The defending champion then opened its playoffs run with a 3-1 win over Brazil’s Street Gaming to set up a battle of former world champions, going up against 2023 winner Wolves Esports.
In a matchup that went the whole five maps, the Filipino squad took victory, 3-2, to relegate Wolves to the lower brackets. Elevate thus advanced to the upper bracket, now against another Chinese team, Qing Jiu Club, which they swept to win last year’s crown.
But this time, the Chinese squad was well prepared, taking down Elevate PuK, 0-3, to drop the Filipinos to the lower brackets against their Garena rival Stalwart Esports.
Elevate PuK wasted no time in dispatching their fellow Filipinos and Southeast Asian brethren in Stalwart Esports, 3-0, to forge a rematch with Qing Jiu Club.
With the upper bracket winners having a 1-0 advantage in the grand finals, Elevate PuK maximized the opening Hardpoint-Apocalypse map to equalize the series. A close grand final that once again went to a decider, Elevate PuK fell to Qing Jiu Club in the final Search and Destroy-Firing range map to settle for a runner-up finish.
Though it suffered back-to-back runner-up finishes, Elevate PuK continues to cement its legacy as the country’s top CODM team, having finished the 2025 season with four podium results: trophies in the Garena Masters Season 8 and Garena Summer Invitational, and silver-medal finishes in the Garena Masters Season 9 and the CODM World Championship.