Counter-strike majors

History

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series, following the original Counter-Strike 1.6 released in 2000. Early community-recognized Majors included CPL Summer and Winter Championships, World Cyber Games, Electronic Sports World Cup, and Intel Extreme Masters World Championships, though Valve did not sponsor them. Other winners included Team 3D from the United States, NoA from Norway, mibr from Brazil, and WeMade FOX from South Korea.

On September 16, 2013, Valve announced a community-funded prize pool for the first official CS:GO Major, partially funded through in-game skin purchases. The tournament took place in Sweden in late November and was won by Fnatic, who upset Ninjas in Pyjamas in the finals. Valve then partnered with tournament organizers to host three Majors per year. Swedish teams Fnatic and NiP combined to win four of the first six Majors, with NiP appearing in five of the first six grand finals.

Fnatic became the first team to win back-to-back Majors and a third Major overall at Cologne 2015, a feat later matched by Astralis and Team Vitality.

Format

After Dreamhack 2013, the top eight teams from each Major earned automatic berths to the next Major as Legends, while the other eight teams, called Challengers, were decided by regional qualifiers. Beginning with DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015, Valve created a single 16-team main qualifier before the Major, with the bottom eight teams from the previous Major earning automatic berths to it. For MLG Columbus 2016, regional qualifiers were replaced by Minors, which involved four regional qualifiers and two last chance qualifiers, sending one team from the Americas, two Asian teams, one CIS team, one European team, and three last chance qualifier spots.

The system was simplified at ESL One Cologne 2016 by removing last chance qualifiers, with four Minors—Asia, CIS, Europe, Americas—each sending two teams to the Major qualifier, joining the bottom eight from the previous Major. At ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, the Major qualifier was integrated into the Major as the Challengers Stage, expanding the field to 24 teams. The former group stage became the Legends Stage, and the playoffs became the Champions Stage.

The Legends earned automatic invitations to the Legends Stage of the next Major, while teams placing 9–16 earned automatic invitations to the Challengers Stage. On August 28, 2018, Valve reduced automatic Major invites to fourteen, requiring the two winless teams from the first phase to go through Minors to return.

Features

Stickers are virtual items purchasable via tokens or the Steam marketplace, applied to in-game gun skins. Since Katowice 2014, Valve has released a team sticker for each Major, and since Cologne 2015, a signature sticker for each player. Stickers come in paper, glitter, holographic, foil, and gold styles, with half of proceeds going to the player or team and half to Valve. Starting from the 2026 Cologne Major, stickers are obtained through a token system rather than capsules. Souvenir packages contain gun skins exclusive to CS:GO Majors, and can rank among the most expensive skins due to rarity. Valve has added in-game memorials, usually graffiti or signs, at event locations after significant Major moments; six such moments have been memorialized, though one graffiti was removed when Dust II was updated.