CS2 Major explained: next Major dates, format and how teams qualify

A Major is Counter-Strike’s world championship: two Valve-sanctioned tournaments a year, 32 teams, a $1.25 million prize pool and the stickers you keep on your rifle for years afterwards. This page keeps track of when the next Major is, how teams get in, how the format works and what happened at the last ones. I update it as Valve and the organizers announce changes; match-by-match news lives in the CS2 news section.

When is the next CS2 Major

Since 2025 Valve has placed the Majors at the end of each season split, so one lands in June and the other in December. The next one is the PGL Major Singapore 2026, starting in late November with the playoffs from 10 to 13 December 2026 at the 12,000-seat Singapore Indoor Stadium. It is the first Major in Southeast Asia and the first with a third-place match. The VRS cut-off that decides the invites is 2 November 2026.

Tournament	Dates	Organizer	Prize pool	Winner
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025	June 2025	BLAST	$1.25M	Vitality (2-1 The MongolZ)
StarLadder Budapest Major 2025	24 Nov – 14 Dec 2025	StarLadder	$1.25M	Vitality (3-1 FaZe)
IEM Cologne Major 2026	2 – 21 June 2026	ESL	$1.25M	Team Falcons (3-0 FURIA)
PGL Major Singapore 2026	late Nov – 13 Dec 2026	PGL	$1.25M	upcoming
FiReMAJOR Buenos Aires 2027	31 May – 20 June 2027	FiReSPORTS	TBA	–
Perfect World Shanghai Major 2027	22 Nov – 12 Dec 2027	Perfect World	expected $1.25M	–

2027 is already locked in. The spring Major is the first ever held in Argentina and the first in South America since Rio 2022, and the autumn one returns to Shanghai, where Perfect World hosted the 2024 Major. Valve collected proposals for the 2028 Majors with an early-March 2026 deadline; hosts and dates have not been published yet.

How the Major format works

Since 2025 a Major has 32 teams and three stages, which Valve’s rulebook calls Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3. Each stage holds 16 teams and runs on the Swiss system: three wins advance you, three losses send you home. Advancement and elimination matches are best-of-three, the rest best-of-one. Eight teams move on from each stage, and in Stage 2 and Stage 3 they are joined by eight newly invited, higher-seeded teams. The playoffs are an eight-team single-elimination bracket on Bo3, with a Bo5 grand final since Budapest 2025.

In Cologne 2026 ESL played the whole of Stage 3 on Bo3 for the first time in Major history and added an extra day to fit it in. Whether PGL keeps that model in Singapore has not been announced.

How teams qualify

There are no RMRs and no regional qualifiers any more. Valve cancelled the Major Regional Qualifiers before Budapest 2025 and now hands out all 32 invites straight from the Valve Regional Standings (VRS): 16 teams into Stage 1, 8 into Stage 2 and 8 into Stage 3. How many slots each region gets depends on how its teams did at the previous Major; for Singapore it is 18 for Europe, 9 for the Americas and 5 for Asia. If an invited team declines or no longer has its original roster, the invite passes down the ranking, and only genuinely unfilled slots go to a last-chance qualifier.

That is why region switches get argued over before every Major. Since 6 October 2026 a team that has appeared in another region’s standings in the past three months cannot switch regions for the Major. Valve immediately granted an exception to BC.Game, which may qualify for Singapore through Asia.

Where to watch

The organizer streams the official broadcast on its own Twitch, YouTube and Kick channels; Cologne ran in more than twenty languages. Inside the game you can follow matches through CSTV Playcast. Restreaming the official feed is banned, so streamer watch parties need the organizer’s permission.

Pick’Em and stickers

Roughly two weeks before the first match Valve opens the Major Hub in-game. For Cologne 2026 that was 22 May, eleven days before the start. Sticker capsules are gone: team and player stickers are bought directly with tokens. The Viewer Pass gives you a Challenge Coin that upgrades as your Pick’Em results come in, and every upgrade tier adds 300 tokens. Cologne also introduced the Souvenir-O-Matic, which turns a weapon you already own into a souvenir version with the event’s stickers. When the hub opens for Singapore will be announced closer to the event.

Records

The IEM Cologne Major 2026 grand final between Team Falcons and FURIA is, according to Esports Charts, the most-watched Counter-Strike match ever: 2,751,121 peak viewers, 2,687 more than the Stockholm 2021 final between G2 and NAVI. The event averaged 627,863 viewers and passed 100 million hours watched, excluding Chinese platforms. For the first time, matches outside the final also crossed two million viewers: the G2 vs Spirit quarterfinal and the Spirit vs Falcons semifinal.

Cologne was the first Major for Falcons, NiKo’s first on his seventeenth attempt, with m0NESY named MVP. Before that Vitality had won two Majors in a row, Austin and Budapest 2025.

Czech and Slovak teams at Majors

The Czech organization SINNERS Esports reached its first Major in Cologne 2026 as the last European team in the standings, after FaZe lost the Belgrade final and freed up the slot. The roster of beastik, SHOCK, MoDo, kisserek and stressarN went 0-3 in Stage 1, losing to FlyQuest, NRG (6-13 on Nuke) and TYLOO (0-2, Ancient 14-16 in overtime and Inferno 10-13). As of 5 October 2026 they sit 34th in Europe in the VRS, outside the 18 European slots for Singapore. Czech player Tomáš “oskar” Šťastný played the PGL Major Kraków 2017 with mousesports.

Get involved

Czech open qualifiers feed the national scene that produced SINNERS: Tipsport MČR CS runs four open qualifiers in October 2026 and Vodafone Talent League seven, both for five-player teams of any rank. For viewers, Tipsport RUSH:Brno in November brings eight invited Tier 2 teams with VRS points at stake, and the in-game Pick’Em runs for every Major.

For organizers

Running a tournament or a league? GamersTogether covers events from the announcement to the results, in Czech, English and German, with a permanent place in this guide. See the media kit or get in touch via the contact page.

FAQ