[GM Notes] [Interview] NA vs EU Showdown at Heidel Ball 2026 - And The Winners Are...!

GM Notes Aug 6, 2026, 09:00 (UTC) [Interview] NA vs EU Showdown at Heidel Ball 2026 - And The Winners Are...!

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>Grab after grab after grab after grab...

An exclusive interview with 2026 NA vs EU Showdown winners, [NA] Team FOMO

[CM] Munki

Adventurers! CM Munki here!

Fun fact: the NA vs EU Showdown at Heidel Ball 2026 was only the third Showdown between NA and EU (ever!). It was also the first Showdown battled live on stage, and by no coincidence, one of the wildest bouts in Black Desert history: the #1 teams of each region, some of the top players in all of Black Desert, going band-for-band with each other to a fifth set after FOMO nearly let a 2-0 lead slip away. ( ˶°ㅁ°) ...!

As they say, pure cinema! I caught up with [NA] Team FOMO right after they walked off as champions to hear how it actually feels to bring the trophy home.

In their own words, let's meet the winners themselves!

Meet [NA] Team FOMO

Click each player to learn more.

[The Greatest Maehwa]

Kozye

Hello, I'm Kozye, also known as Akari. I started playing Black Desert since the game fully came out in NA; I played a bit before in Korean servers as a Maehwa, but not that much. From the moment I started playing BDO, I instantly started going into the PvP scene, but being competitive started when I joined a guild called Skirmish that was made by Yelo. That's also where I met BelIy; he was the main guy that trialed me to join the guild.

After that, I kept being competitive and trying to do every tournament there was. I started playing Arena of Solare (AoS) since Season 1 and kept playing every season.

My big main is Maehwa, though since Maehwa isn't really a great class at the moment. I started really maining Lahn for over a year or so, because Maehwa is a class where you have to Crowd Control (CC) people, which is hard in a full Super Armor (SA) meta.

As for how I ended up playing with FOMO this year, me and Meiimo have been doing tournaments together for over 3 years or so. We wanted to always stick together for every tournament and find the best teammates for us, so we ended up going for Calb first because we knew he was a prodigy-to-be and an exceptional player. For BelIy, we were trialing multiple people as a substitute and found out that he was just the best choice because the vibes he was bringing were just amazing and his plays were exceptional.

I'm looking forward to doing more and more tournaments with the same exact team. Best team I could ever ask for.

[The Greatest Wizard]

BelIy

Hi, I'm BelIy, I've been a Witch main since Steam release and played Succession since it came out. At first, I was interested in Witch because of its depth and weird, archaic class mechanics. Then, when I was invited to my first tournament, it scratched a competitive itch that's had me hooked on Arena of Arsha (AoA) ever since.

Regarding FOMO, well, it's just an amazing privilege to be able to play with these guys who are really some of the best in the NA scene. Between Meiimo, who I idolized before I even knew how to rotate protections, Kozye, who trained alongside me in my first PvP guild, and Calb (God's gift to BDO), it's just been such a rewarding experience for me. I owe 'em so much for carrying me all the way to LA.

[The Greatest Kunoichi]

Calb

I've been playing BDO since 2018, kinda playing random stuff, then was locked on Striker in like 2022 and started to get into PVP and trying to learn it. Eventually, I swapped to Sage, who was my main for years until the recent changes. Now, I kinda just play whatever, but mainly Kuno. My first ever tourney was the Master Class for Sage, and after that, I've loved the format and try to get into every tourney I can.

Meiimo and Akari (Kozye) reached out to me for the tourney to be their third, and we've been scrimming ever since.

CM Munki

Congratulations guys! How are you feeling? I mean, wow - what a match!

Kozye

It was a match. Just going 2-0, then they came back, and at the end we just fully went through it.

CM Munki

Full send. What was it like up on stage?

Kozye

Honestly, at the beginning it was so stressful thinking about how everybody's going to watch us. I would start, like, shaking a little bit, but we were still hyping each other up and always saying good words between us, like “We're gonna win!”, “We got this!”

Then, after the first match, I wasn't even stressed. Even if I was getting killed, I was like, “It's OK guys, we got this.”

BelIy

It was really fun being next to them. I would forget to call a cooldown and they'd just look over like 😐

Kozye

Yeah, he did that once.

CM Munki

💀💀💀

So, FOMO kind of had it in the beginning, but things swung the other way for sets 3 and 4 - that must've been a little nerve-wracking, going to a 5th set. Was there any particular moment where you felt like things tipped in your favor?

Kozye

I think on the very last set when we just started getting CCs with two of them together, I was just like, “OK, we got this in the bag.”

In the very last round, we killed one person, and I just knew that if the other one goes... Like, the moment I see them, I instantly yelled. I was like, “This is it - we play it cool, we all have these, they don't have nothing, we got this.”

CM Munki

Nice!

Kozye

Yeah - we killed the second-to-last, and then there was just one left. Even if it was a Nova with Accel, I was like, “We're not dying, this is it.”

CM Munki

Going in, what was your big concern about facing EU? What were you expecting to have to play around?

All

The damage!

Kozye

One was the damage and the other was the vacuums.

BelIy

A big thing we were worried about was Kozye getting killed standing, and the advantage that we thought we had was Pruim had to play Nova because Seraph was nerfed. That was a class that we could damage dump just as hard. So every time he came in, the plan was to trade him and then take the 3v2, and I think it worked really well.

Kozye

Yeah, I feel like the only annoying part about that was that he started just running so much we couldn't chase him. So, then I was like, “OK, we got to maybe switch to Avi; he does too much damage.”

And... the first one didn't work. We lost that set because it was like Calb trying to protect me. But, the moment I switched to Belly, it went well.

CM Munki

Very nice! One last question for the group, then I have one question for each of you.

Speaking as a pretty new player myself, do you have any words for new players, or maybe any players who aren't so experienced in the way of PVP or competitive BDO?

BelIy

I want to say two things.

The first thing is read your skills. There's a lot of words on your skills. I mean, for the first couple of years in the game I was constantly opening the Skill Tree and I would find something new in my class every time.

The second thing is take that, go into Battle Arena, and try it out. Battle Arena is not as popular these days, but if you find somebody to duel, that's the best way to improve.

CM Munki

Okay, yeah! But when I went there, I got called a rat...

BelIy

What class do you play?

CM Munki

Zerker 😳

BelIy

That's why.

CM Munki

😭 ...

Kozye

Yeah, for me, I mean, no one's good at the start. It's just trial and error; you don't have to be scared.

A lot of people when I try to make them, like, “Oh, you should do a tournament, try this out,” you know, and they're like, “There's no point. I'm going to lose either way.” Why would you go with that mentality?

Just go with the mentality of, “I'm here for the experience. I'm here to learn. If I do something bad, we lose. It's OK. Next time, I'll know. Next time we're going to learn more. We're going to do more.”

It's trial and error. You don't have to be scared. If you like the PVP, even if you're not that great at start, I promise you with time it's going to go up.

BelIy

For me, it was fake it 'til you make it.

CM Munki

Got it. Calb, do you have anything you wanna add?

Calb

😅

BelIy

The prodigy is not going to share his secrets!

CM Munki

Well, I wanted to get to that because Calb, some are calling you the MVP of the match. How does that feel? What was your mentality throughout the game?

Calb

I mean just in tournament settings, nerves are the biggest thing, so I always try to play super aggressive like how I would normally play, and it just ended up working out.

Kozye

The CCs man... especially on the first match. The EU team even said, “We should have won that, BUT Calb got grab after grab after grab after grab. We can do nothing.” The Wizard wasn't working against Calb.

CM Munki

For sure. And as for Belly on Wizard, how did you manage to survive with such big pressure on you - from Mystic and Nova, for example?

BelIy

Well, normally when we played together, like in the Showdown tournament, I was saving my peel skills like Protected Area (PA) and Mass Teleport (TP) for my teammates.

I had to use them on myself and I thought, “It's OK to waste these cooldowns because at the same time they're pressuring me, my teammates are getting some value.”

So, I just held on to those. EU, I think, slacked off on pressuring me, and they gave me some good resets where I could get all three ticks of heals. So that helped a lot.

CM Munki

Cool, cool! My last question would be for Kozye. Is it pronounced “Kozye” or “Kozye”?

Kozye

Kozye!

CM Munki

Ah, of course! You know, I heard some adventurers saying it as “Kozye”...

But really, why did you choose to stay on Lahn?

Kozye

Well, the plan at the beginning was me to go on Maehwa to just really scare and damage the Nova. But then afterwards, I knew that if we win the first match, they're going to get scared and they're gonna think, “Oh, he's gonna stay on Maehwa.”

I was like, “No, we're changing the plan. I'm going on Lahn. They'll never know.” And then it was just basically a surprise instantly afterwards.

BelIy

We lucked out playing it into the Wizard, too. I think they brought it to punish Lahn.

CM Munki

Gotcha! That's pretty much all the questions I have, but is there anything else you want to share?

BelIy

We've got to shout out everybody that helped us. It was a huge team effort.

Calb, Kozye

True.

BelIy

First of all, shout out Meiimo. He carried us all the way here.

CM Munki

You know, I did want to ask about that. Meiimo didn't attend this time; what has his involvement been like since regionals?

Calb

He was a coach.

BelIy

He's really mature and has organized scrims and whatnot. He has helped us so much.

CM Munki

Awesome. Continue, continue!

BelIy

Well, everybody in NA came together to help out in some way or another, whether it was driving Calb around or coming to scrims, setting up servers, creating a TeamSpeak for us last minute, I mean, everybody helped out. I love NA servers so much.

Calb

Special shoutout to Coco.

All

Coco!

Kozye

He was the guy that was on Mystic, and he was there at every scrim we did.

BelIy

He studied FTP like crazy.

Kozye

Yeah, yeah, he was telling us everything about it.

CM Munki

🙊🙊🙊

On that note, I was curious about your experience scrimming versus EU...

Calb

Actually, we didn't really scrim versus EU. When we did, they went on Awakening Lahn, Succession Nova, etc...

Kozye, BelIy

They didn't want to give anything away! No one wanted to give anything away.

BelIy

But yeah, I can't say shout out every name because there's too many.

Calb

Tooooo many!

Kozye

Shout out to everyone that coached me on Lahn. I had like Yuike, Rhya, everyone just trying to help me learn - like, “You can do this, try this.” I was just asking for coaches left and right, and people were just helping us out for everything, even Armin.

BelIy

Make sure you get the Rhya shoutout in the note, that's gonna rile people up :^)

Final Thoughts?

That's a wrap! But if you happened to miss the NA vs EU Showdown and you're feeling a little bit of FOMO yourself, you can still check out the match highlights below.