The Counter-Strike Major Championships, also called the Majors, are esports tournaments for the game Counter-Strike (CS). These tournaments are supported by Valve, the company that created the game. The first Major approved by Valve happened in 2013 in Jönköping, Sweden, and was organized by DreamHack. It had a total prize money of US$250,000 shared among 16 teams. This and the next 19 Majors were played in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Since the release of Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) in 2023, all Counter-Strike esports tournaments, including the Majors, are played in CS2.
The Major tournaments have grown larger over time. Recent events offer a prize pool of US$1,250,000 and include 32 teams from around the world. The Majors are the most important and highly respected tournaments in the Counter-Strike esports community.
The current champions are Team Vitality, who won their third Major at the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025, the fourth Major held in Counter-Strike 2. Astralis holds the record for the most Major titles, with four.
History
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game created by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. The first game, Counter-Strike 1.6, was released in 2000, and competitive play started soon after. The first major international tournament was the 2001 Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) Winter Championship, which was called the first "Major." Other tournaments, such as the CPL Summer and Winter Championships, World Cyber Games, Electronic Sports World Cup, and Intel Extreme Masters World Championships, were considered Majors by players, even though Valve did not officially sponsor them.
Swedish teams, especially SK Gaming, were very successful in early Major tournaments. However, the Polish team known as the Golden Five had the most wins. Teams from other countries also won 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, one year after the release of Global Offensive, Valve announced a prize pool of 250,000 dollars for the first official CS:GO Major. Part of the money came from players buying in-game skins through the Arms Deal update. Valve said the tournament would be held in Sweden and hosted by DreamHack. The event took place in late November, and the Swedish team Fnatic won by defeating Ninjas in Pyjamas in the finals. After this event, Valve partnered with tournament organizers to host three Majors each year. These events are the most important in competitive CS:GO, and players are often judged by their performance at them.
In the early years, Swedish teams like Fnatic and NiP won most of the first six Majors. Fnatic became the first team to win two Majors in a row and the first to win three total. This achievement was later matched by Astralis and Team Vitality, though Vitality did not keep the same team members during their wins.
At the end of 2015, Valve announced that MLG would host the first Major in North America. On February 23, 2016, Valve increased the prize pool to 1,000,000 dollars and reduced the number of Majors per year to two. Luminosity Gaming, a Brazilian team, became the first non-European team to win a Major at MLG Columbus 2016. This team later won two Majors in a row, with their second win as SK Gaming at ESL One Cologne 2016.
Gambit Esports, a team mostly from Kazakhstan, won PGL Major Kraków 2017, becoming the first team from Asia or the CIS region to win a Major.
On December 13, 2017, ELEAGUE announced a new format for the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, increasing the number of teams from sixteen to twenty-four. This was the first Major held in multiple cities, with group stages in Atlanta. Cloud9, an American team, won the event, becoming 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 in Counter-Strike history. They won three Majors in a row and four total, including events in London 2018, Katowice 2019, and Berlin 2019. Following Berlin 2019, Valve and ESL announced ESL One Rio 2020, the first Major in South America. The event was originally planned for May 2020 but was postponed to November 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2020, the Rio Major was canceled because of the pandemic. In December 2020, Valve moved the 2021 Major to October and November 2021 due to concerns about the pandemic.
On January 14, 2021, Valve announced that the 2021 Major would be held in Stockholm from October 23 to November 7, 2021. This was the first Major in over two years. Natus Vincere dominated the tournament, becoming the first team in CS:GO history to win a Major without losing a single map. The event reached 2.75 million viewers at its peak.
FaZe Clan won the PGL Major Antwerp 2022, defeating Natus Vincere 2-0, and became the first international team in CS:GO history to win a Major.
The canceled ESL One Rio 2020 Major was replaced with IEM Rio Major 2022, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from October 31 to November 13, 2022. Outsiders, a team named for Virtus.pro due to ties with Russia, won the tournament by defeating Heroic in the final.
BLAST Paris Major 2023 took place in Paris from May 8 to May 21, 2023, with a prize pool of 1,250,000 dollars. Soon after the announcement of Counter-Strike 2, Valve said the BLAST Paris Major would be the last CS:GO Major, with the next one in March 2024 for CS2. Team Vitality, a French team with star player Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut, defeated GamerLegion 2-0 to win the final CS:GO Major.
The first Counter-Strike 2 Major, PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024, was held in the Royal Arena from March 17 to 31, 2024. On November 12, 2023, Perfect World, the company responsible for distributing Counter-Strike 2 in China, announced the second CS2 Major would take place in Shanghai from December 1 to 15, 2024. Team Spirit defeated FaZe Clan 2-1, with star player donk becoming the youngest Major winner and MVP at 17 years and 324 days old.
On January 3, 2025, Valve announced that the number of teams in Majors would increase to thirty-two, starting with the BLAST Austin Major that year. Team Vitality won their second Major by defeating The MongolZ 2-1 and their third Major by defeating FaZe Clan
Format
After the Dreamhack 2013 event, the top eight teams from each Major (those that reached the playoff stage) received automatic invitations to the next Major. These teams are called "Legends." The other eight teams, called "Challengers," were chosen through regional qualifiers, mostly from Europe and North America. A few teams were directly invited or earned spots through a last chance qualifier when needed. Starting with the DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 qualification cycle, Valve created a single 16-team main qualifier for the Major. The bottom eight teams from the previous Major automatically qualified for this new main qualifier, and regional qualifiers now sent teams to the main qualifier instead of directly to the Major.
For MLG Columbus 2016, regional qualifiers leading into the Major qualifier were replaced by "Minors." The Columbus Minor system included four regional qualifiers and two "last chance" qualifiers. This system resulted in one team from the Americas, two Asian teams, one CIS team, one European team, and three last chance qualifier spots earning invites. This system was simplified for ESL One Cologne 2016 by removing the last chance qualifiers. Four Minors—Asia, CIS, Europe, and Americas—were used. Two teams from each qualifier joined the bottom eight teams from the previous Major in the Major qualifier. The top eight teams from the 16-team Major qualifier advanced to the Major.
At ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, the Major qualifier was combined into the full Major as the first of three phases, increasing the number of teams in each Major to 24. The Major qualifier was renamed the "Challengers Stage," the former group stage became the "Legends Stage," and the playoff stage was named the "Champions Stage." This change increased the number of teams with automatic Major invites to 16, while keeping the Minor system to fill the remaining eight spots in the first phase of the Major. The Legends—teams that reached the playoff stage—received automatic invitations to the Legends Stage of the next Major, while teams placing 9-16 earned automatic invitations to the Challengers Stage of the next Major. On August 28, 2018, Valve announced that the number of automatic Major invites would be reduced to 14, starting with the London 2018 Major. The two teams that went winless in the first phase had to compete in the Minors to qualify for the next Major.
From the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 to the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024, no teams received automatic berths based on their performance in the previous Major. Instead, a Regional Major Ranking (RMR) system was used. Initially, this system involved yearly points circuits where each region held three qualifying tournaments. Teams earned points toward Major qualification, with distinctions like Contenders, Challengers, and Legends for top teams in each region. The RMR system was first used for the ESL One Rio Major 2020, but the event’s cancellation made PGL Major Stockholm 2021 the first Major to use it.
At PGL Major Antwerp 2022, the points circuit was replaced with qualifying tournaments named after the RMR system. These included two tournaments for Europe (including the CIS region), one for the Americas, and one for Asia-Pacific. Teams qualified for their regional RMRs by reaching the Legends Stage of the previous Major or through online qualifiers open to all teams. Closed Qualifiers were added between RMRs and Open Qualifiers for the Paris 2023 event, but Open Qualifiers were later removed in most regions for Shanghai 2024. Instead, Valve Regional Standings (VRS), a ranking system used by Valve to identify top teams in each region, became the main method for qualification. Regions could gain or lose Challengers and Legends spots in the Major based on their performance in the previous Major. For example, after PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, the Americas region changed from having 1 Legends spot and 4 Challengers spots to 7 Challengers spots for Shanghai 2024 after four teams from the Americas qualified for the Elimination Stage but none reached the Playoff stage.
For BLAST Austin Major 2025, an extra stage was added to the Major, increasing the number of teams to 32 and the number of stages to four. Sixteen teams were directly invited from the VRS to the second and third stages. The other 16 teams qualified for the first stage through Major Regional Qualifiers (MRQs), with the next-best teams in each VRS invited. This system was later changed for StarLadder Budapest 2025, where Stage 1 spots were also allocated through the VRS. Like the RMR system, regions could gain or lose invites to later stages of the Major based on their performance in the previous Major. Six teams each from the Americas and Europe, and four teams from Asia-Pacific, qualified for Stage 1 of the Major.
Unlike traditional sports or other esports leagues, Valve assigns Major spots to the players on a team, not the organization itself. For example, at the ELEAGUE Major 2017, Team EnVyUs placed ninth, earning an automatic berth to the next Major qualifier. However, before the next Major, three of EnVyUs’s players transferred to G2 Esports, causing Team EnVyUs to lose its spot in the Major qualifier.
Although the playoff stage of Majors has generally followed an 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 group of four teams, the two higher seeds faced the two lower seeds first. The winners of these matches played to determine the top seed, while the losers played to eliminate one team. After this, the remaining two teams played for the final playoff spot. All group stage games at the first Majors were best-of-one matches. 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. The first three matches followed the standard GSL format to determine group winners. Afterward, teams were reassigned so that the two losers played in different groups, and the decider match also involved teams from different groups.
Beginning in 2017, the group stage used a Swiss-system format. Before the tournament, teams were divided into four pots based on seeding. A randomly selected team from pot one faced a randomly selected team from pot four, and the same process was repeated for pots two and three. After the initial matches, teams played five rounds against randomly drawn teams with the same record. No two teams played twice unless necessary. A team advanced if it won three matches and was eliminated if it lost three matches. All games were best-of-one until the London 2018 Major. The Boston 2018 Major featured two Swiss group stages: the former offline Major qualifier became the "New Challengers Stage," and the group stage was renamed the "New Legends Stage." The London 2018 Major used a modified Swiss system called the Buchholz system, where matchups were seeded instead of random, and the final round used best-of-three sets.
List of Major Championships
Beginning in 2014 at Cologne, maps were divided into two categories: Active Duty and Reserves. The Active Duty category was used for all Major events. The team or organization is no longer participating in Counter-Strike esports.
Features
Stickers are virtual items in the game that players can purchase or receive from sticker capsules. These stickers can be placed on gun skins in the game. Since 2014, Valve has created a sticker design for each team that participated in a Major tournament. Since 2015, Valve has also made stickers featuring the signature of each professional player. These stickers come in different styles, such as paper, glitter, holographic, foil, and gold. When players buy stickers, half of the money earned goes to the player or team, and the other half goes to Valve.
Sticker capsules are only available during specific tournaments and can only be bought at that time. Because they are limited in number, stickers from early tournaments often become more valuable over time. For example, a "Titan" holographic sticker from the 2014 Katowice Major initially cost less than $10. In 2023, this sticker sold for $80,000 on secondary markets, making it the most expensive sticker trade in the game's history.
Souvenir packages are virtual items that contain unique gun skins. These skins are only available during CS:GO Major tournaments. Because they are rare, souvenir skins can be among the most expensive in the game. For example, after Cloud9 won the 2018 Boston Major, a souvenir skin featuring the signature of the finals MVP, Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham, sold for $61,000.
Valve has added in-game memorials to locations where significant or iconic moments happened during Major tournaments. These memorials are usually in the form of graffiti or signs. So far, Valve has created memorials for six moments in Major tournaments. However, one graffiti memorial was removed when the map "Dust II" was updated.