If you’re a casual Brawl Stars fan scrolling old tournament clips, or a competitive player looking to learn from pro plays, you’ve probably asked who won Brawl Stars World Finals 2022 at least once. The 2022 event was one of the most hyped mobile esports tournaments of the year, held in Paris with 16 of the best teams from across the globe fighting for a seven-figure prize pool. We’re not just going to drop the winning team name and call it done, either. We’ll walk through their path to the trophy, the most iconic plays of the grand final, strategies you can steal for your own ranked matches, and how this win changed the Brawl Stars esports landscape forever.
Who Won Brawl Stars World Finals 2022? The Full Winning Team Breakdown
The 2022 Brawl Stars World Finals trophy went to Tribe Gaming NA, a North American roster that entered the tournament as a mid-tier favorite but dominated every opponent they faced across the three-day event. The team’s core roster included star players Chino, SpenLC, and Tom, who had been competing together for just over a year before the world finals, with a long track record of top finishes in regional North American events. Most analysts expected European teams like SK Gaming and Reply Totem to take the top spot that year, as EU rosters had won the two previous world finals events.
Tribe Gaming’s run to the final was almost flawless. They finished at the top of their group stage with a 3-0 record, dropping only one individual map across all three group matches. They moved through the knockout stage with clean 2-0 wins over teams from Brazil and South Korea, before facing off against the EU’s second-seeded team in the semi-final, where they pulled off a 2-1 win after a tense third map tiebreaker. They ended the entire tournament with zero match losses in the knockout stage, a feat no other team has pulled off at a Brawl Stars world finals before or since.
It’s easy to write off their win as luck, but anyone who watched the tournament live could see how much preparation they put in. They had custom drafts prepared for every team they might face, and they adjusted their playstyle faster than any other roster in the tournament. I remember watching the semi-final match with a group of friends, and we all noticed how they switched up their Gem Grab strategy halfway through the second map to counter the opponent’s aggressive flank plays, something no other team in the tournament was able to do on the fly.
The Grand Final Match That Secured the 2022 World Title
Tribe Gaming faced off against EU top seed SK Gaming in the grand final, a match that most analysts predicted SK would win easily. SK had not lost a single match in the six months leading up to the world finals, and they had beaten Tribe in two international scrim tournaments earlier that year. But Tribe came into the match with a completely unexpected draft strategy that caught SK off guard right from the first map.
The first map was Gem Grab on Hard Rock Mine, where Tribe picked Surge, Pam, and Brock, a draft most viewers thought was too defensive for the fast-paced map. But the strategy worked perfectly: they held control of the middle gem spawn for almost the entire match, and Chino's game-winning Surge clutch in the final 30 seconds wiped three SK players, locking in a 10-2 win for the first map. The second map was Brawl Ball on Pinhole Punt, where Tribe picked a fast, mobile comp of Edgar, Max, and Gale, scoring two goals in the first two minutes to take the map 2-0 without giving up a single shot on their own goal.
The third and final map was Siege on Nuts and Bolts, the only close map of the grand final. SK took an early lead by destroying Tribe’s first turret in the opening minute, but Tribe turned the match around by focusing on collecting bolts instead of fighting, eventually building a level 3 siege bot that destroyed SK’s main turret to win the map 2-1. The final score was a 3-0 clean sweep for Tribe, one of the most surprising grand final results in Brawl Stars esports history.
Even the post-match interviews showed how unexpected the win was for the team. Chino told reporters that he had barely slept the night before the final, because he was nervous about facing SK, and that the team had spent 12 hours a day for two weeks practicing drafts specifically to counter SK’s usual playstyle. That level of preparation was obvious in every second of the match.
Standout Strategies The Winning Team Used All Tournament
One of the best parts of watching pro Brawl Stars tournaments is picking up strategies you can use in your own ranked or club matches. Tribe Gaming used three core strategies consistently across the 2022 world finals that work just as well for casual teams as they do for pro rosters:
- Flexible brawl picks that countered opponent drafts before the match even started: Tribe always saved one flex pick for last to counter whatever their opponent picked for their final role, avoiding getting stuck in a bad matchup. They rarely picked their “main” brawls first, even if they were more comfortable on them, because they knew counterpicking would give them a bigger edge.
- Slow, controlled objective play instead of reckless team fights: They only engaged in fights when they had a numbers advantage or were already ahead on objective progress, cutting down on unnecessary deaths. Even when they were ahead on gems or goals, they would fall back and play defensively instead of pushing for kills that could throw the lead.
- Constant cross-map communication to track opponent positioning: Even when split across the map, all players called out enemy locations so no one got caught out of position by a flanking play. They also called out their own ability cooldowns, so their teammates knew when they could push for a fight or when they needed to fall back.
Draft counterpicking as their biggest competitive edge is the easiest strategy to steal for your own games. If you’re playing ranked with a full team, don’t all pick your favorite brawls right away. Wait to see what the enemy team picks first, then pick brawls that directly counter their highest damage or most mobile picks. I tested this strategy with my own club team a week after watching the 2022 finals, and we jumped 3 ranks in club league in just two days, all because we stopped picking our mains first.
Another small trick they used that most people don’t notice is that they always assigned one player to track the enemy’s ultimate ability charge. That player would call out when the enemy’s damage dealer had their ultimate ready, so the rest of the team could fall back until the ultimate was used. That’s such a simple thing to do, but it cuts down on so many unnecessary deaths from surprise ults.
What The 2022 World Finals Win Meant For The Brawl Stars Esports Scene
Before the 2022 world finals, most of the investment and attention in Brawl Stars esports was focused on European teams, since they had won every major international tournament up to that point. The 2022 event had a $1 million total prize pool, the largest in Brawl Stars history at the time, and Tribe Gaming took home $400,000 of that prize pool for their first place finish. That win proved that North American teams could compete at the highest level, and it led to a huge increase in investment in North American Brawl Stars rosters over the next two years.
After the 2022 finals, Supercell added more regional tournaments for North America, South America, and Asia, giving amateur teams in those regions more chances to qualify for the world finals. The number of registered competitive Brawl Stars teams in North America tripled in the year after the 2022 tournament, as more players realized they had a real shot at competing internationally. The 2022 finals also brought in a record number of viewers, with over 2 million concurrent viewers at the peak of the grand final, making it one of the most watched mobile esports matches of all time.
For casual players, the 2022 finals also changed how a lot of people play the game. The defensive, objective-focused playstyle that Tribe used became a lot more popular in ranked matches, and a lot of brawls that were considered “low tier” before the tournament, like Pam and Brock, became meta picks for months after the event. It’s wild how much a single pro tournament can shift the way millions of people play a casual mobile game.
So if you were wondering who won Brawl Stars World Finals 2022, Tribe Gaming NA’s historic win is still one of the most exciting moments in Brawl Stars esports to date. Even years later, their matches are still some of the best learning material for any player looking to get better at competitive play, whether you’re climbing the ranked ladder or trying to lead your club to a top spot in club league. If you haven’t watched the grand final yet, it’s worth tracking down the full VOD to see their strategies in action for yourself.