VALORANT: baha joins FUT Esports in the VCT EMEA

On Thursday, FUT Esports announced on X their new player for the VALORANT VCT EMEA 2026 season: Baha "baha" Gözmen. baha is a 2005-born Turkish player who now joins FUT Esports after spending the 2024/2025 period moving through several top domestic organisations, including İstanbul Wildcats, Dark Passage, and Papara SuperMassive.

Primarily fielded as a Controller specialist, he has recently played most of his maps on agents such as Omen and Brimstone, with some good K/D and a rating above 1.20 on Omen across his latest matches, which positions him as a statistically efficient space-creator rather than a high-variance Duelist.

During 2025, baha made the jump from İstanbul Wildcats to Papara SuperMassive in March, continuing to compete in the Turkish ecosystem through VALORANT Challengers Türkiye: Birlik Stage 2. This trajectory gave him sustained stage time against the strongest line-ups in the region and a full year of practice inside structured, partner-backed environments, which now culminates in his first move into a VCT EMEA partner team with FUT Esports.

baha arrives in a FUT Esports line-up that has been a constant presence at international events since joining the VCT EMEA partnership program, with appearances at Masters Tokyo and Shanghai as well as back-to-back qualifications for VALORANT Champions in 2023 and 2024. However, the 2025 season has been less straightforward. In VCT 2025 EMEA Stage 2, FUT Esports were eliminated in the group stage while Team Vitality, Karmine Corp and Natus Vincere advanced to the playoffs, marking a step back compared to their previous deep runs.

Results across the stage reflected that inconsistency. FUT opened the split with group-stage wins, but defeats to teams like Team Vitality and Team Heretics ultimately pushed them below the cutoff line and out of contention for the playoff bracket. In parallel, the organisation began reshaping its structure around the core, while also parting ways with head coach Ivan "Johnta" Shevtsov and granting long-time star Mehmet "cNed" Yağız İpek permission to explore offers for 2026, signalling a broader retooling ahead of the next season.

Against that backdrop, the addition of baha gives FUT Esports a young Turkish Controller with recent high tier-two experience who can slot directly into their VCT EMEA starting five. The move aligns with the organisation’s strategy of rebuilding around a refreshed core while maintaining a strong national identity, and sets up 2026 as the season in which FUT will try to convert their recent structural changes into a return to consistent playoff and international contention.

For more roster changes, check out our Transfers Hub and Offseason Live Tracker.