Twisted Minds wins PUBG PGS 12 after final-day title race

KRAFTON has named Twisted Minds the PGS 12 champions after the team sealed the final PUBG Global Series event of 2026 with a tense finish on the last day of the Grand Finals. In the developer’s recap, PUBG expert and caster Jisooboy summed up the result in three words: “The king has returned.”

Twisted Minds ended the 15-match Grand Finals on 140 points and clinched the title with an 11-kill Chicken Dinner in the final match. The win closed a year in which the roster spent long stretches trying to rediscover the form that made it one of the most decorated teams in PUBG Esports during 2024 and 2025.

A two-point race before the last match

The deciding stretch came down to the final round. After Match 14, Twisted Minds held 119 points, with eArena just behind on 117. DN SOOPers were still in the chase as well, but the championship picture had narrowed to a handful of teams with one game left to play.

Twisted Minds did not wait for the standings to settle on their own. As other teams lost players around them, the eventual champions kept their structure intact and turned the last match into a decisive finish. The 11-kill Chicken Dinner pushed them to 140 points and locked up the final PGS title of the year.

The final-day comeback stands out even more because of how the rest of 2026 unfolded. Jisooboy said Twisted Minds opened the season below expectation and gradually drifted away from the center of the championship race after previously dominating the global stage. The team did post signs of life, finishing third at PEC Spring 2026 and third again at PGS 4, but those results did not lead to a lasting run of form. At EWC 2026, Twisted Minds placed eighth and gave up its defending champion status to Virtus.pro.

That was a sharp drop from the team’s peak years. Jisooboy pointed to Twisted Minds’ stretch of dominance between 2024 and 2025, when the roster won three straight PGS titles in 2024. In 2025, it added the Esports World Cup, won PGS 9, and finished second at PGS 10. By that point, the team had built a reputation as one of the most complete lineups in PUBG Esports.

Why the roster worked before, and what changed in 2026

Jisooboy’s recap explains Twisted Minds through the way its four players fit together. BatulinS read the flow of the battlefield, xmpl led engagements, Perfect1ks kept up with the changing meta, and Lu served as the team’s last line of defense. The team’s strength came from all four players knowing their jobs and carrying them out according to the situation, rather than leaning on one superstar.

He also described the roster as more than a pure fighting team. Twisted Minds knew when to push, when to back off, and when to apply pressure. Strong rotations and positioning created favorable situations, and the team usually had the firepower to convert those openings into wins.

The shift to TPP in 2026 changed that formula. Jisooboy said the switch altered nearly every part of competition, from how teams gathered information and planned fights to how they defended positions. In FPP, players have to expose themselves to see around them. In TPP, they can check their surroundings from behind cover, and simply knowing where an opponent is can be a major advantage. Information, timing, and decision-making became stronger weapons than before.

Those changes hurt established teams too. Jisooboy said habits that had worked well in FPP could become liabilities in the new environment, and Twisted Minds was no exception. The team’s quick reads and match control no longer produced the same edge. Its fighting also slipped against opponents whose mechanical skill had improved, and it often struggled to get into and hold strong positions near the center of the circle. When the team was forced onto the defensive, others found it easier to exploit.

He even suggested that the weight of the team’s previous success may have made the transition harder. After winning multiple international championships in 2024 and 2025, Twisted Minds had to rethink methods that had already brought it success. Changing those habits was not simple, because those same methods had once carried the roster to the top.

BatulinS, xmpl, Perfect1ks and Lu deliver a different version of the team

Twisted Minds’ championship run in PGS 12, as Jisooboy tells it, came from a more direct and more adaptable approach. BatulinS made decisions faster, and the roster became less interested in simply sitting inside the circle when things went wrong. Instead of surviving at any cost, the team started stepping into other squads’ fights and using those battles to secure points. That shift meant Twisted Minds could still score even without a Chicken Dinner in every match.

xmpl was a major reason the more aggressive style worked. Jisooboy said that, in pure gun skill, only a small number of players in the world can match him. He also pointed to his PGS 12 numbers: 27 kills, 27 knocks, and an average of 391 damage per match, all ranked first. His total damage reached 5,871, which put him 1,611 ahead of TGLTN, who finished on 4,260. Most striking of all, xmpl posted 3,572 damage with DMRs, compared with just 777 from assault rifles.

Perfect1ks also adapted to the new meta in a more visible way. Jisooboy said he had started using buffed Light Machine Guns heavily and kept bringing them into fights even after later balance adjustments. He used them to shred enemy vehicles and cut off mobility, then paired those openings with xmpl’s finishing power. Mortars became another tool in his hands, and he finished first in that category at PGS 12 Grand Finals with four mortar kills.

Lu, meanwhile, was described as a player who had spent much of 2026 in a slump before returning to form when it mattered most. Jisooboy said he had long been the kind of player who could rescue his teammates from impossible situations, but that his shooting, decision-making, and clutch saves had all become less frequent during the year. In PGS 12, he looked closer to the version of himself that had anchored earlier successes, using cleaner utility and strong survival instincts to help carry Twisted Minds through the decisive moments.

Jisooboy framed that recovery as essential. Without Lu getting back to that level, he said, a Twisted Minds resurgence in 2026 would not have been possible. His return rounded out a roster that had already shifted its style, allowing the team to fight more effectively and hold on when the title race tightened late.

The recap closes by treating PGS 12 as more than a repeat of old glory. Twisted Minds had to move past the version of itself that once seemed untouchable, then rebuild after a long stretch of trial and error. The result was not a clean march back to the top, but a hard-earned finish in a tournament that went down to the final match. With 140 points and the last Chicken Dinner of the event, Twisted Minds ended the final PGS of 2026 as champion once again.

The full PGS 12 title race and the broader season context were covered in GAMER2GO’s earlier PUBG: Battlegrounds reporting, including our PGS 12 Survival Stage update.