Counter-Strike Major Championships

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. The first game in the series, Counter-Strike 1.6, was officially released in 2000 and competitive play began soon after. The first significant international tournament was the 2001 Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) Winter Championship, considered the first "Major". The CPL Summer and Winter Championships, along with the World Cyber Games, Electronic Sports World Cup and Intel Extreme Masters World Championships, were considered Majors by the community, although Valve did not sponsor or give any official designation to the tournaments. dominated early Majors but the Polish roster known as the Golden Five were the most successful lineup. Many teams from other parts of the world would win Majors, including Team 3D from the United States at CPL Winter 2002 and WCG 2004, NoA from Norway at CPL Winter 2004, mibr from Brazil at ESWC 2006, and WeMade FOX from South Korea at WEM 2010. On September 16, 2013, a year after the release of Global Offensive, Valve announced a community-funded prize pool for the first official CS:GO Major. The money was partially community-funded through the game's Arms Deal update, which allowed players to buy in-game skins. The tournament took place in late November and was won by the Swedish team Fnatic who upset Ninjas in Pyjamas in the finals. After Dreamhack 2013, Valve announced they would partner with tournament organizers to host three Majors per year. These Majors are the most prestigious events in the competitive CS:GO scene, and the professional players' legacies are often judged by their performances at these tournaments. The early Majors were dominated by Swedish teams, as Fnatic and NiP combined to win the four of the first six Majors. NiP would play in five of the first six grand finals. When Fnatic won Cologne 2015, they became the first team to win back to back Majors, and the first to win a third Major in total. This feat has only been matched by Astralis and Team Vitality, although Vitality did not maintain the same roster core throughout their Major wins. At the end of 2015, Valve announced that MLG would host the first Major in North America. On February 23, 2016, with MLG Columbus 2016 coming up, Valve announced a permanent increase in the prize pool from to . However, Valve reduced the number of Majors per year from three to two. Luminosity Gaming, a Brazilian team, won the event to becomes the first non-European team to win a Major. This roster would also go on to win back to back Majors, with their second as SK Gaming at ESL One Cologne 2016. On December 13, 2017, the general manager of ELEAGUE, the hosts of the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, announced a revised format designed by Valve and ELEAGUE that would expand the number of teams in the Major from sixteen to twenty-four. This was also the first Major to take place in multiple cities, as the group stages took place in Atlanta at the Turner Studios. Cloud9, an American team, won the event to become the first North American team to win a Major. After Boston 2018, the Danish team Astralis became the top team in CS:GO and one of the best teams in Counter-Strike history. With wins at London 2018, Katowice 2019, and Berlin 2019, Astralis become the first team to win three Majors in a row and four majors total. After Berlin 2019, Valve and ESL announced the following Major, ESL One Rio 2020, which was to be the first Major to be hosted in South America. Rio 2020, originally scheduled for May, was then postponed to November due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The November Major was announced with a prize pool, combining the amounts that would have been set aside for both Majors. In September 2020, the Rio Major was officially canceled due to COVID-19. In December 2020, Valve moved the 2021 Major from May to October and November, citing concerns over the pandemic. On January 14, 2021, Valve announced that the championship would be held between October 23 and November 7 in Stockholm. Over two years after the last Major, PGL Major Stockholm 2021 took place, with favourites Natus Vincere dominating the tournament and becoming the first team in CS:GO history to win a Major without dropping a single map throughout the tournament. PGL Major Stockholm 2021 surpassed the long-standing Counter-Strike viewership record 4 times; reaching 2.75 million concurrent viewers in the final. FaZe Clan won the PGL Major Antwerp 2022, defeating Natus Vincere 2-0, and becoming the first international team in CS:GO history to win a Major. The previously cancelled ESL One Rio 2020 Major was replaced with IEM Rio Major 2022 and was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on October 31 - November 13, 2022. Outsiders, a neutral name for esports organization Virtus.pro due to ties with the Russian government in light of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, won the tournament defeating Heroic in the grand final 2-0. BLAST Paris Major 2023 was held in Paris on May 8 - May 21, 2023 with a prize pool of $1,250,000 USD. Shortly after the announcement of Counter-Strike 2, the official CS:GO Twitter account announced that the BLAST Paris Major would be the last CS:GO Major with the next major happening in March 2024 in CS2. Team Vitality, a French organization with native star player Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut, defeated dark horse GamerLegion by 2–0 to clinch the final CS:GO Major title. The first Counter-Strike 2 Major was announced to be the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 which was held from March 17–31 in the Royal Arena. On November 12, 2023, Perfect World, who are responsible for distributing Counter-Strike 2 in China, announced the second major following the release of Counter-Strike 2, taking place in Shanghai between December 1-15, 2024. Team Spirit defeated FaZe Clan 2-1, with star player donk becoming the youngest player to win a Major and Major MVP at 17 years 324 days old. On January 3, 2025, Valve announced a second expansion of the number of teams to thirty-two, starting with the BLAST Austin Major that year. Team Vitality would win their second Major trophy after defeating The MongolZ 2-1, and their third after defeating FaZe Clan 3-1 at the Budapest Major, in the first Major grand final to be held as a best-of-five. ==Format==

Qualification Starting after Dreamhack 2013, the top eight teams from each Major (those who made it to the playoff stage) earned automatic berths to the next Major. These teams are called "Legends". The other eight teams, called "Challengers", were decided by regional qualifiers, mainly from Europe and North America. Beginning with the DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 qualification cycle, Valve created a single 16-team main qualifier before the Major. The bottom eight teams from the previous Major earn automatic berths to the newly formed Major qualifier, and the regional qualifiers now send teams to the main qualifier, instead of directly to the Major. For MLG Columbus 2016 the regional qualifiers, leading into the Major qualifier, were replaced by "Minors". The Columbus Minor system involved four regional qualifiers and two "last chance" qualifiers, and results in invites going to one team from the Americas, two Asian teams, one CIS team, one European team, and three last chance qualifier spots. The system was simplified in the following Major, ESL One Cologne 2016, with the removal of the last chance qualifiers. Four Minors—Asia, CIS, Europe, Americas—were used. Two teams from each qualifier would go to the Major qualifier, joining the bottom eight teams from the previous Major. The Major qualifier was renamed the "Challengers Stage", the former group stage was renamed the "Legends Stage", and the playoff stage was named the "Champions Stage". On August 28, 2018, shortly before the start of the FACEIT Major: London 2018, Valve announced that they were reducing the number of automatic Major invites to fourteen, starting with the London 2018 Major; the two teams that go winless in the first phase must go through the Minors to get back to the next Major. From the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 up until the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024, no automatic berths were given to any team regardless of their record in the previous Major. Instead, a Regional Major Ranking (RMR) system was used, which at first was a yearly points circuit where each region would have three qualifying tournaments where teams can receive points towards qualifying for the Major, which included Contenders, Challengers and Legends distinctions (as well as the Legends) for the top teams within each region. Despite initially being used for the ESL One Rio Major 2020, the event's cancellation would mean that PGL Major Stockholm 2021 was the first Major that utilized the RMR system. The very next Major, PGL Major Antwerp 2022, would scrap the points circuit in favor of qualifying tournaments that bore the RMR name, initially and ultimately 2 for Europe (which included the CIS region), 1 for the Americas and 1 for Asia-Pacific. Teams qualified for their regional RMRs via making the Legends Stage of the previous major or via online qualifying made up of Open Qualifiers, where any team could sign up and compete for RMR spots. Closed Qualifiers were added between the RMRs and the Open Qualifiers in time for Paris 2023, while Open Qualifiers were removed in most regions for Shanghai 2024 in favor of extensively utilizing the Valve Regional Standings (VRS), a ranking system utilized by Valve to determine the best teams in each region and globally. In addition, regions could gain or lose Challengers and Legends spots in the Major based on the region's results from the previous Major, with 3 Challengers spots reserved for Europe and the Americas and 2 for Asia-Pacific. For example, after PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, the Americas region would go from 1 Legends spot and 4 Challengers spot, to 7 Challengers spots for Shanghai, after 4 teams from the Americas qualified for the Elimination Stage, with none making the Playoff stage. For BLAST Austin Major 2025, an extra stage was added to the Major, expanding the number of teams to 32 and stages to four. Of these, 16 are directly invited from the VRS to the second and third stages. The other sixteen teams qualified for the Major's first stage via Major Regional Qualifiers, or MRQs, with the next-best teams in each VRS being invited; this system would be scrapped for StarLadder Budapest 2025 as the Stage 1 spots would also be allocated via VRS. Like with the RMR system, regions can gain and lose invites to the later stages of the Major based on the prior Major's results, but 6 teams each from the Americas and Europe, as well as 4 teams from Asia-Pacific, qualify for the Major in Stage 1. Unlike traditional sports or other esports leagues, Valve considers the players in each team to have the Major spots, rather than the organization itself. Tournament format Although the playoff stage of the Majors has generally followed a standard 8-team single-elimination format, the group stages have changed multiple times. From 2013 to 2016, Majors used a four group GSL-style format for the group stage. In each four-team group, the two higher seeds would initially face the two lower seeds. The two winners from the first round of matches would then play to determine which team gets the top seed. The two losers would also play to eliminate one team. After this second round of matches, the remaining two teams play to determine which team takes the final playoff spot. All group stage games at the first Majors were best-of-ones. The last Major of 2015 and both Majors in 2016 featured a best-of-three decider in the final match of each group. The group stage of ESL One Cologne 2015 worked differently. Initially, the first three matches of the group stage started out the same way as the standard GSL format, determining the group winner. However, teams were then reassigned afterwards so that the two losers played from different groups and then the decider match would also be teams from different groups. Beginning in 2017, the group stage has featured a Swiss-system group stage. Before the tournament, teams are divided into four pots, with pot one having the four highest seeds, pot two having the next four highest seeds, and so on. A randomly selected team from pot one would face off against a randomly selected team from pot four. The same process is done with the pots two and three. After the initial seeded match, teams play five rounds against randomly drawn teams with the same record. The next Major, Katowice 2019, featured a crowdsourced Elo system, in which participating teams ranked the 15 other teams before the Legends Stage to create a seeding system for each round of the Swiss system. The Copenhagen 2024 Major changed the names of the two Swiss stages, with the Challengers Stage becoming the Opening Stage and the Legends Stage becoming the Elimination Stage, while the first round match-up seeding for the Swiss stages was tweaked. A third Swiss stage was added beginning with the 2025 Austin Major to accompany the expansion to 32 teams. One of the most high-profile VAC bans was given to Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian. KQLY, along with several other professional players, was banned while playing for France's best team, Titan. Valve has also banned players from Valve-sponsored events for match fixing. The first Valve ban for match fixing was a response to the iBUYPOWER match fixing scandal, in which esports journalist Richard Lewis revealed that one of North America's best teams, iBUYPOWER, had thrown a match for high-value skins. Valve indefinitely banned seven players who were involved in the scandal from attending any Majors. Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham was the only iBUYPOWER player not to be banned, as he did not receive any payment after the game. Valve would later make the bans permanent, causing some controversy in the Counter-Strike community. Although tournament organizers ESL and DreamHack lifted their own bans on the former iBUYPOWER players in 2017, the Major ban effectively ended the high level careers of two of North America's best in-game leaders (Sam "DaZeD" Marine and Joshua "steel" Nissan) and Braxton "swag" Pierce. Skadoodle would go on to win a Major with Cloud9. Following the iBUYPOWER ban, there have been two other match fixing bans, resulting in nine other players being barred from the Majors. ==List of Major Championships==

Map pool Starting with Cologne 2014, maps were grouped into Active Duty and Reserves, with the former category being used for all Majors. Titles by organization Team or organization no longer participates in Counter-Strike esports. ==Features==

Stickers Stickers are virtual items in the game which players can buy or get from sticker capsules. The stickers can then be applied to in-game gun skins. Valve has released a sticker design for each team attending a Major since Katowice 2014, and a sticker for each professional player's signature since Cologne 2015. These two types of stickers come in a variety of styles: paper, glitter, holographic, foil, and gold. With each sticker purchase, half of the proceeds go to the player or team and half go to Valve. making it the most expensive public sticker trade in the game's history. Souvenir packages Souvenir packages are virtual packages containing a gun skin that are exclusive to CS:GO Majors. These "souvenir skins" can rank among the most expensive skins in the game because of their rarity. After Cloud9 became the first ever North American CS:GO Major champion at Boston 2018, a souvenir skin with the signature of the finals MVP, Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham, sold for . In-game tributes After certain significant or iconic moments in Global Offensive Majors, Valve has added in-game memorials to the location of the event, usually in the form of graffiti or signs. Thus far, there have been six moments in Majors that have been memorialized by Valve, though one graffiti was removed when Dust II was updated. ==Notes==