The pinnacle of gaming, Counter Strike CS2 Major Championship, broke records in June. The best of 5 finals between FURIA and Team Falcons eclipsed 2.75 million live viewers, setting an all-time CS2 viewership record that had been standing since 2021.
A major is Counter Strike’s biggest tournament, and they happen approximately twice a year and change locations each time. For 2026’s first major, which concluded on Sunday, June 21, the location was in Cologne, Germany, in the iconic Lanxess Arena. There’s a CS2 tournament in Cologne every year, and it’s always one of the biggest and most important of the season, but this time the stage was even bigger due to the fact that it was a major championship.
And the finals were between two teams who have never even won a major. FURIA, a Brazilian organization with primarily Brazilian players, took on Team Falcons, a Saudi Arabian club with an international roster. Despite the viewership record, the game was a blowout. Falcons absolutely dominated the series from start to finish, not just winning all three games, but doing so handily. However, despite the one-sided nature of the championship, there were still storylines that diehard Counter Strike fans adored. One of the greatest players of all time, Bosnian rifler Niko, has been playing CSGO and CS2 at the highest level for over a decade now, and yet has never won a major championship. Until now, that is, as he was instrumental in Team Falcons’ run to Counter-Strike’s mountain top. He was previously regarded as the best player of all time, to never win a major. Now, the back half of that title can be satisfyingly chopped off.
Another fascinating aspect of Falcons’ run is the team’s reliance on young talent paired with veterans like Niko (29 years old) and Karrigan (36). The Major MVP was awarded to m0NESY, a 21 year old Russian prodigy who is currently ranked as a top-3 player in the world. He was just 17 years old when he was thrust into the highest level of professional play while earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. Team Falcons, backed by Saudi Arabia’s oil fortune, bought him out of his prior contract to help construct the best team in the world, and the rumor is he makes over $70,000 a month as a base salary, winnings excluded. And this tournament alone had a million dollar prize pool. He’s paired with fellow Russian superstar Kyousuke, who becomes one of the youngest major winners ever at just 18 years old! Counter-Strike is a 5v5 game, with each team having a head coach who can communicate mid-game during timeouts, so the aforementioned players make up basically the entire starting lineup. The final piece of the puzzle was TeSeS, a Danish role player who doesn’t have ‘superstar’ status like m0NESY, Niko, or even Kyousuke, but he was in Team Falcons before all of them and served a key role in the team’s success.
What About CS2 Favorite FURIA?
But on the other side of things, despite the crushing defeat for FURIA, the loss still marks the organization’s loftiest ever result in a major. They previously made the semifinals (top-4) back in 2022 – when the event was held in front of the home crowd in Rio de Janeiro, but this was the club’s first finals appearance. So despite the heartbreaking end, Cologne 2026 was still a fantastic showing from FURIA. Especially when you consider the economic juxtaposition of these two squads. Team Falcons is backed by more money than any other team on the planet, regularly paying insane amounts of money to buy out other teams’ superstars. Meanwhile FURIA is further down on the financial pecking order. Not to mention, they stay true to their country with three Brazilian players in the starting five… and a head coach native of the country as well. Two of those Brazilians, KSCERATO and Yuurih, have been with the organization for over eight years now. A ton of loyalty and chemistry went into building FURIA into a top 5 team in the world. Not money. There’s something to be said about that.
So while I am happy for Niko, a man who deserved a major trophy, there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted FURIA to win.
But that doesn’t take away from the individual success of Team Falcons. They beat the Number One squad in the world, France’s Team Vitality, in the quarterfinals to even be in that position. Vitality were back-to-back major champions and entered Cologne as the favorite to three-peat. That was an impressive feat. As was taking down Team Spirit, a Russian organization led by the best player in the world, Donk, who is just 19 years old and already won a major of his own, the youngest to ever do it, in 2024.
And following any Major comes the approximately one month long player break, which is effectively the offseason for Counter-Strike. Smaller events are still sprinkled throughout the calendar, but the top teams in the world are off for a handful of weeks. It gives each organization a chance to reevaluate and make roster changes ahead of the next season. Teams can sign and drop players at any moment, but the most natural time to do it is during a player break.
So that’s where we stand following the record setting Major CS2 Championship in Cologne.
