StarLadder Budapest Major 2025

The fourth CS2 Major and the first with a best-of-five grand final.

The StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 was the fourth Counter-Strike 2 Major Championship and the twenty-third Counter-Strike Major overall, held in Budapest from November 24 to December 14, 2025. Team Vitality beat FaZe Clan 3-1 in the first best-of-five Major final for a third title, and ZywOo took a record third Major MVP.

Quick Facts

Game: Counter-Strike 2
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Start date: November 24
End date: December 14, 2025
Administrator: Valve; StarLadder
Format: Three 16-team Swiss-system group stages; 8-team single-elimination playoff
Host: StarLadder
Venue: MTK Sportpark (Group stages); MVM Dome (Playoffs stage)

Facts from the source article.

Background

StarLadder announced the event on 12 May 2025, its second Major after Berlin 2019. All 32 teams were invited directly through the Valve Regional Standings after regional qualifiers were scrapped, making it the second Major with 32 teams; the first three stages were played at MTK Sportpark and the playoffs at the MVM Dome, all in front of live audiences. Invites were set by the 6 October 2025 standings and sent on 8 October.

Three Swiss-system stages each eliminated eight teams, with best-of-one matches except for progression and elimination games, and seeding after the opening round by Buchholz score. Stage 1 featured sixteen directly invited teams competing for eight Stage 2 spots and was played from November 24 to November 27, 2025. Stage 2, played from November 29 to December 2, added eight directly invited teams to the eight Stage 1 qualifiers, and Stage 3, from December 4 to December 7, did the same for eight Playoffs Stage spots. The Playoffs Stage was played between December 11 and December 14, 2025, at the MVM Dome. Valve had swapped Anubis out of the Active Duty pool for Overpass in July 2025, leaving Ancient, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke, Train and Overpass.

Vitality came in as defending champions after beating The MongolZ at Austin 2025 and became the third organisation to win consecutive Majors after Fnatic and Astralis. The talent lineup, announced on October 28, included hosts James Banks and Freya Spiers and casters such as launders, SPUNJ and Machine.