FaZe IGL Finn “karrigan” Andersen is reportedly set to join Falcons after his team’s last-ditch attempt at qualifying for the IEM Cologne Major 2026 ended in disaster. The move will see the IGL unite with both Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and Danny “zonic” Sørensen.
The move was first reported by Sébastien “KRL” Perez on X (formerly Twitter), with HLTV’s own report independently corroborating it soon after. karrigan will likely take over from Damjan “kyxsan” Stoilkovski, leaving the North Macedonian leader in search of another home in the offseason. Notably, both reports suggest the move will be completed ahead of the IEM Cologne Major, giving the roster a chance to hit the ground running at Counter-Strike’s most important event.
Another superteam shot for Karrigan with Falcons
Ever since the FaZe roster of 2017, karrigan’s squads have relied heavily on firepower to allow for the Dane’s tactics to flourish. During downturns in individual form, the same tactics that worked wonders just weeks prior can fall flat. This was the case in FaZe across 2025, and particularly 2026. After all, the mid-round reads are only as good as the aim of the players who execute them.
Related—FaZe missing IEM Cologne Major 2026 the ‘lowest point’ of his career, says Karrigan
Falcons is the obvious destination for karrigan, but can he make the move stick? The team has ample talent in NiKo, Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov, and Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin, and even gives karrigan access to a supportive soldier in René “TeSeS” Madsen, much like his legendary partnership with Håvard “rain” Nygaard. However, Falcons has struggled to make the stars perform consistently so far, leaving karrigan with a challenge no IGL has solved yet.
The team’s playstyle since adding Kyousuke has highlighted a number of unwelcome overlaps between the team’s various stars, forcing TeSeS to sacrifice his own roles to facilitate the others. But at its core the solution is quite simple. In fact, you could model the roles based on karrigan’s own FaZe rosters.
Prior to his transformation in G2, NiKo was the world’s bets lurker, often employing a playstyle very similar to the dominant Robin “ropz” Kool we see in Vitality today. Slot the Bosnian back into those roles and suddenly the roles don’t feel dissimilar to FaZe 2022. NiKo takes up ropz’s lurk roles, while aggressive players kyousuke and TeSeS make up the entry spearhead onto bombsites. And turning up the firepower by several notches, m0NESY’s big green can get involved in whatever duels the Russian chooses to take.
On paper, the fix is simple, but it will be down to karrigan and Zonic to make the team understand just whats needed to make the Falcons soar.
Can NiKo, Zonic and karrigan work together once more?
NiKo and karrigan’s history on FaZe is well known, with the Dane being ousted by the team and NiKo eventually taking over as IGL. But fans may gloss over the zonic-karrigan pairing’s past. When the Danish organization Astralis first entered the scene, zonic was already the coach of karrigan’s former TSM squad featuring the likes of Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen, and Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth.
Related—Karrigan benched by Astralis coach zonic
After months of struggling to reach their peak potential, zonic himself made the decision to cut karrigan from the roster, later bringing in gla1ve to great success. Now in Falcons, zonic, karrigan, and NiKo will not only work together, but will make up the leadership core crucial to any progress for the roster. If that trio can find common ground, Falcons will suddenly become Vitality’s greatest threat in the last 18 months.
The fact that the roster move is happening at all suggests all parties are at least happy to give the project a shot. But can this be the roster that finally gives NiKo his missing major trophy, with karrigan by his side?
