FaZe Clan’s disastrous season reached a fresh low at HLC Belgrade PRO when the team failed to lift the trophy and earn their invite to the Major.
The failure to make IEM Cologne Major 2026 also means FaZe IGL Karrigan will lose his record of making the most majors in Counter-Strike, with Vitality’s apEX set to take over that title instead.
FaZe fail to make IEM Cologne Major 2026 invite list after HLC failure
FaZe’s season had already unravelled when the team flopped out of DraculaN Season 6. In fact, the team essentially threw in the towel after that disaster, with players claiming that the team will travel to Bucharest instead of making a hail mary attempt for Cologne. At the last second though, the team changed their plans, flying out to Belgrade instead of Bucharest to compete at the HLC Belgrade PRO 2026.
The event featured the likes of illwill, magic, and ex-Zero Tenacity in the playoffs, with BIG and FaZe being the obvious grand finals favorites. The weaker field allowed FaZe to make a flawless run into the finals of the event, even dominating BIG on the first map of the series, Dust2. But Johannes “tabseN” Wodarz and co. regrouped, battling back to win the series, eliminating FaZe from the major race in the process.
FaZe Karrigan: “I hope I can survive this and come back.”
The defeat proved to be the final nail in FaZe’s Cologne campaign. The IGL took to X following the elimination to comment on the result. Karrigan was perfectly candid in his assessment, refusing to make any excuses for the team’s failure to secure a major invite.
“I don’t know man, deserved not to go to the major that’s for sure and there is no freaking excuses. Rough months incoming but I never gave up at any point these months, but this is the lowest point of my career. I will fight and I hope I can survive this and come back,” the Danish IGL wrote.
A similar sentiment was echoed in Karrigan’s interview with HLTV after FaZe’s elimination from PGL Bucharest 2026, where he grimly stated: “It’s going to leave a scar on me, and that’s a scar I’ll try to heal, or it’s going to break me.”
How FaZe will managed their off-season changes remains to be seen, but right now the team needs to focus up on the two remaining Tier-1 events on their calendar, IEM Atlanta and BLAST Rivals Fort-Worth, to keep themselves in the circuit for the second season.
