Counter-Strike 2 had a transformative year in 2025, with significant improvements to tournament formats and the competitive ecosystem. As we head into 2026, the game stands at a crossroads where a few targeted changes could elevate it from great to exceptional.
From tournament structure refinements to long-overdue gameplay updates, here’s what CS2 needs to deliver in the coming year to satisfy both professional players and the broader community.
Best-of-three across the entire CS2 Major
2025 was a great year for format changes, especially at the Major. First Austin expanded the premier CS2 tournament to 32 teams, bringing sticker revenue to even more teams, and Budapest followed it up with a best-of-five grand final. Both changes were a welcome update to the classic Major format, improving the status of the Valve-sponsored event.
Heading into 2026, the Major format just needs one more change to be essentially perfect. That change would be the standardization of best-of-three matches across all group stages. Bo3s have already been standard across S-tier events since the online era, and Majors following suit would greatly improve the competitiveness of the format.
As it stands, the best way for a low-seeded team to make it through a Swiss stage is to practice a singular map to the highest degree possible, and hope to make two early upsets over favorites in the best-of-ones. Not only does that put these teams one match away from the next stage, it also ensures that they can’t face those two favorites in the best-of-threes, especially in the 2-2 game.
That’s how matches like FaZe vs. Passion UA end up deciding a playoffs spot while G2 has to face The Falcons to qualify. If IEM Cologne 2026 receives Valve’s blessing to make this change, it might just become the best Major in CS2 history.
Seasonal map changes and post-Major announcements
Valve has found a good rhythm of map pool changes across the past 12 months. Train first joined the pool, replacing Vertigo in January, and Overpass followed suit, taking over from Anubis in July. That’s a solid system that keeps the game fresh for both casual players and professionals.
But announcing the map change just a week before the first events of the year kick off gives teams very little time to truly prepare for the map. A better way to achieve the same result would be to announce the change at the Major grand finals. Valorant follows a similar system, often revealing the latest agent and map during the Champions finals preshow.
That announcement schedule would not only boost viewership at the start of the grand finals as casual players tune in to find out the upcoming maps, but would also give teams the chance to practice on the new map throughout the player break. This allows them to head into the next tournament fully warmed up. With Cache potentially the next map coming in, the map pool will be an exciting aspect of CS2 in 2026.
CS2’s promise of updates actually paying off
The community’s ire at the lack of CS2 updates can often be a bit hyperbolic. But it is not without basis. Part of the pitch behind transitioning the game engine from Source to Source 2 was the promise that a ground-up rebuild of the game would allow developers to more easily update CS2 in the future. After all, the original CS:GO codebase wasn’t even developed by Valve themselves, instead being pawned off to a third-party studio.
Related—Counter-Strike 2 officially announced, launching summer 2023
But so far everything we’ve seen in CS2 could have, and was, achieved in Global Offensive. In fact, the Retakes game mode being added back to CS2 was a significant update, despite the mode already existing in CS:GO. And as the cherry on top, the CS2 version of Retakes is more glitchy, with players being kicked from bot control and onto a black screen if a new player joins the team.
If there was any truth to the promise of quicker updates, then a good old fashioned Operation, or even a genuine weekly mission system that isn’t just “get X kills with Y weapon or on Z map”, would go a long way in instilling confidence in the community.
Even more open qualifiers for Tier 1 events
If you built a brand new squad in early 2025, like NiP did, you were signing up for months of grinding online events before your team would see their first LAN event. That made the entire process of setting up a new team devolve into buying an existing core of players and swapping pieces out over time till you land on the team you wanted in the first place.
Not only is that process more expensive and limiting, it also has the potential to derail the careers of many young players. Joining a team knowing you will likely be removed in just a couple of months is tough enough. A large buyout dangling over your head can make that even harder.
Luckily 2026 looks to be improving on that process, with significantly more Open Qualifiers being announced for Tier 1 events. If that trend continues we could see rosters like the 100 Thieves qualify their way into the VRS circuit within the first season itself.
VRS formula update for faster decay and shorter delays
Speaking of the VRS, Valve’s system has been nearly perfect for the CS2 scene across 2025. Even when it motivates decisions like the core-led system discussed above, on the whole the VRS has made events, especially the Major, a lot more exciting. There’s always room for improvement though.
The biggest issue with the VRS at the moment is the delay between tournament invites and the first matches being played at those events. Quite often, a large number of events will invite teams entirely based on the post-Major ranking, defining most of the following season and giving these teams a large leg up for the Major qualification.
That, combined with the rather slow decay of a team’s ranking points, allows teams like Liquid to earn a large number of invites off the back of a Major performance and then coast through the rest of the season needing just a win or two to jump right back into the next Major.
The exact details of how the formula should change would require a large amount of data processing, which VRS-wizards like MischiefCS2 have attempted. But any change should be a light finger on the scales, rather than an overhaul of a system that has proven successful.
Counter-Strike 2 has built a strong foundation in 2025, but 2026 presents an opportunity to refine that foundation into something exceptional. From perfecting the Major format with universal best-of-three matches to delivering on the promise of the Source 2 engine with meaningful content updates, each of these changes would address real pain points in the community. The pieces are all there. Now it’s time for Valve and tournament organizers to put them together.
