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Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev joined Team Falcons on loan for three months almost a month ago.

Naturally, after such a long break, the CS2 community was eager to see him competing against the world’s best teams and was wondering if he still had what it takes to be considered in the same category as Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov, and other superstar players.

His first two matches in the group stage of Thunderpick World Championship 2024 clearly showed that he has not forgotten how to play the game. But unfortunately, Falcons still lost both times.

Team Falcons vs. 3DMAX

3DMAX is not yet a big name in CS2, but this French team should not be underestimated. Its current global rank is 24^th.

In the match against Falcons, 3DMAX were heavily carried by Lucas “Lucky” Chastang, who finished with a personal KD score of 22 – 9 and a rating 2.1 of 1.48.

Meanwhile, s1mple was by far the weakest player on the server, finishing with a KD score of just 5 – 14. He did, however, play much better on the second map, where his 27 – 16 score was the best. Falcons lost 10 – 13 on Anubis and 9 – 13 on Nuke.

Team Falcons vs. Virtus.pro

In the second match of the group, VP proved to be in great shape. S1mple’s former teammate, Denis “electroNic” Sharipov, probably gave his team a few useful tips. However, on both maps, s1mple was the best player on his team, ending with positive scores. But the rest of Falcons’ roster did very little to help him.

The scores were 9 – 13 on Mirage and 8 – 13 on Anubis. With a bit more training, Team Falcons could become a top 10 team. Right now, they are ranked 23^rd globally and do not look capable of winning against the likes of Na’Vi, Vitality, and G2.

RES Regional Champions was a $250.000 event held in Belgrade, Serbia. It was organized by RLG and featured eight teams from the top 100.

Nemiga Gaming, who were ranked 46^th, were not expected to win. But they performed just well enough to claim the trophy and the $150.000 prize awarded to the winner.

Nemiga’s Path To The Trophy

Nemiga started RES Regional Champions in group A, where they had to play against Sangal Esports, Fluxo, and Aurora Gaming.

Their first match, against Sangal, was an unfortunate failure. After winning Ancient 6 – 13 and leading on Vertigo 4 – 8, Nemiga lost the second map in overtime (19 – 17) and were crushed on the third map 13 – 5.

To advance to the playoffs, Nemiga now had to beat both Aurora and Fluxo. Against both of them, they struggled and gave the impression that they would lose. But, thanks to the excellent performance of Ivan “zweih” Gogin and some of his teammates, they triumped each time and won the match 2 – 1.

In the playoffs, Nemiga encountered Fnatic, who had won group B with ease. Once again, everyone assumed they would lose but they played far better than expected, winning 13 – 5 on Ancient and 13 – 10 on Dust II.

Apart from Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson, who finished the match with a neutral KD score of 31 – 31, all of Fnatic players struggled.

The Grand Final was an excellent opportunity for UNPAID, Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad’s current team, to achieve a great result. But Nemiga ruined his plans.

After losing the first map 13 – 10, the team led by Aleksandr “1eeR” Nahornyj easily won on Ancient (7 – 13) and Inferno (6 – 13).

After this win, Nemiga will probably receive more invitations from tournament organizers. Another thing worth mentioning is that they also qualified for ESL Pro League S21. This clearly indicates that their RES Regional Champions victory was not a fluke.

We’ve known for quite some time that 2025 will be an epic year for CS2. But now that ESL’s plans have been revealed, we finally have confirmation that this great esport’s professional scene is thriving and will only get bigger.

Around 25 S-tier tournaments are scheduled for next year and many of them offer prize pools of at least $1 million. The Majors, as expected, now offer $1,25 million. But there are many other events, from PGL and FISSURE, that offer the same amount.

ESL has not yet disclosed the prize pools for its tournaments. But we know that there will be at least seven of them.

Confirmed ESL Tournaments For 2025

Here’s a list of the CS2 events that will be organized by ESL in 2025, in chronological order:

• IEM Katowice: January 29 – February 9
• ESL Pro League S21: February 25 – March 16
• IEM Spring: April 21 – 27
• IEM Dallas: May 19 – 25
• IEM Cologne: July 23 – August 3
• ESL Pro League S22: September 23 – October 12
• IEM Chegdu: November 3 – 9

At least four of these CS2 tournaments will be epic, in the sense that they will bring together between 16 and 32 of the world’s best teams. They are, of course, IEM Katowice, IEM Cologne, and the two EPL events.

Other Exciting CS2 Events In 2025

For the top professional teams, next year will be very challenging but also full of opportunities. PGL seems determined to claim a decent portion of the calendar year with four $1,25 million tournaments.

• PGL on FiRe Buenos Aires
• PGL Bucharest
• PGL Astana
• PGL Belgrade

BLAST will take it to the next level too, and it seems that their events will be marketed differently.

• BLAST Bounty Spring
• BLAST Open Spring
• BLAST Rivals Spring
• BLAST Bounty Fall
• BLAST Open Fall
• BLAST Rivals Fall
• ??? (possibly a BLAST World event)

Perfect World, FISSURE, Skyesports, Thunderpick, StarLadder, and potentially other organizers have also claimed a piece of the pie. Their events are fewer but just as exciting. Without a doubt, 2025 will be a glorious year for CS2!

Thunderpick World Championship 2024 is an upcoming CS2 tournament that features 16 strong teams and offers $850.000 in prize money. It is scheduled to take place in Berlin between October 21 – November 3.

Today, the complete list of participants has been revealed. Teams like G2 Esports, Team Vitality, and Natus Vincere will not compete in the tournament, but many other great organizations will. Among them, Team Falcons will be one of the most exciting to watch because Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev has finally returned.

Participants

Here are the 16 teams that will compete in Thunderpick World Championship 2024:

• 3DMAX
• Team Falcons
• UNPAID
• Virtus.pro
• HEROIC
• Imperial Esports
• Legacy
• Ninjas in Pyjamas
• 9z Team
• Cloud9
• Fnatic
• The MongolZ
• Aurora Gaming
• BESTIA
• BIG
• M80

Format

The competitive format is very simple: four groups of four teams followed by playoffs. The groups use the double-elimination format. The playoffs use the single-elimination format. The best two teams from each group advance to the playoffs. Every match is best-of-three with the exception of the Grand Final.

Favorites

Here are the favorites in each of the four groups:

Group A

• 3DMAX
• Team Falcons
• UNPAID
• Virtus.pro

VP will likely win this group, unless, of course, Team Falcons have reached a decent level of fluency faster than usual. S1mple joined just three weeks ago, and that’s usually not enough to create a well-coordinated roster.

Group B

• HEROIC
• Imperial Esports
• Legacy
• Ninjas in Pyjamas

In group B of Thunderpick World Championship 2024, HEROIC and NiP are the big favorites. But the Brazilian teams should not be underestimated.

Group C

• 9z Team
• Cloud9
• Fnatic
• The MongolZ

This will probably be the most contested group of the four. The MongolZ are the favorites, but any of the other three teams could easily finish second or even win.

Group D

• Aurora Gaming
• BESTIA
• BIG
• M80

Unless BIG or M80 make major blunders and show up to the event in poor shape, BESTIA and Aurora don’t stand a chance against them.

According to undisclosed sources of HLTV, CS2 Majors will be changed significantly from 2025. The RMRs, which are the qualifiers for these tournaments, will disappear, and their place will be taken by an invitation-based system.

Of course, this system will not be implemented purely preferentially. Teams will be invited based on their global rank, which in turn will follow Valve’s rules. On top of that, the number of participants is set to increase from 24 to 32. This way, we will no longer have Majors where lots of important teams are not present.

The truth is that fans care very little about the RMRs. What they want is to see their favorite players and teams clash against each other in the biggest CS2 tournaments of the year.

Some organizations, like Fnatic and G2 Esports, attract many viewers regardless of their current rosters. If they happen to perform poorly during the RMRs and miss the Major, that’s bad for everyone involved. And you can’t really say that they don’t deserve to be at the Major if they’re in the top 30 overall.

A New Format

With 32 teams in the race, organizers will need to come up with a new tournament format. What that format will be remains to be seen. But most likely, instead of two Swiss stages, there will be three.

An alternative would be to create four groups of eight teams and then have just one Swiss stage before the playoffs.

There are a few other options but it all depends on what the organizers want to achieve. Intuitively, a large number of matches would be desirable because they greatly increase the viewership numbers.

But this would also increase the duration of the Majors significantly. These tournaments are already quite long, lasting for two weeks.

Intel Grand Slam Season 5 started on April 17, 2023. That’s the date when FaZe Clan won the 4^th IGS. Since then, not a single team has managed to win four titles during a window of 10 consecutive tournaments, including one of the following three: IEM Katowice, IEM Cologne, or an ESL Major.

At the moment, both Natus Vincere and FaZe Clan have two victories. Team Vitality, G2 Esports, MOUZ, and Team Spirit have one. However, Na’Vi still have eight remaining chances, while FaZe Clan only have two of them.

Vitality have seven and G2 have six, but based on their recent results, they’re unlikely to win three of their next 6-7 tournaments.

Natus Vincere’s Current Form

At the start of 2024, Na’Vi was faced with big challenges and a lot of uncertainty. The team’s best player, Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, had decided to take a break just several months before. He was replaced by a 17-year-old named Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov, who has since become a formidable AWPer.

On top of this, most of Na’Vi’s roster had changed in June 2023 and the team ended the year without a single trophy. The question on everyone’s mind was pretty clear: will the organization descend into mediocrity without its star player?

The answer came at the end of March, when Natus Vincere won the PGL Major in Copenhagen. Several failures followed this big success but pretty soon, Na’Vi started to dominate the professional scene.

Between June and October, they played in six consecutive Grand Finals of S-tier events, winning three of them, including the most recent one, IEM Rio 2024.

This performance is certainly enough to guarantee that the current Na’Vi roster will remain unchanged until the end of next year, unless the players themselves choose to step down and search for other opportunities. But why would they?

Natus Vincere entered IEM Rio 2024 with high ambitions. After losing the Grand Finals of IEM Cologne and BLAST Premier Fall Final, they probably wanted to prove to their fans and also to themselves that they are still the best team in CS2.

The year 2024 has been absolutely incredible for the Ukrainian organization: four S-tier trophies, including a Major, as well as three 2^nd place results. It’s hard to do better than this.

The Path To The Trophy

At IEM Rio 2024, Na’Vi started in group A with an easy match against Imperial Esports. The score was 13 – 2 on Nuke and the entire roster played well.

The second match was harder. Team Liquid easily won the first map, Inferno, 3 – 13. But on the next two maps, Na’Vi proved why they’re the best: 13 – 5 on Dust II and 13 – 11 on Ancient. Liquid nearly managed to force an overtime after being led 8 – 4 but they were denied in the last round.

The upper bracket Final did not go as planned. FURIA Esports, the local favorites, defeated Na’Vi 0 – 2 and advanced to the semifinals. For the Ukrainian side, this meant they now needed to win three consecutive matches to claim the trophy.

In the first one, against Virtus.pro, they struggled a bit on the second map but still won 2 – 0. Then, against HEROIC, the struggle became even more intense. After losing 13 – 9 on Ancient and being 6 rounds down after the first half of Dust II, Na’Vi made a spectacular comeback and won 14 – 16 followed by 6 – 13 on Mirage.

The Grand Final against MOUZ had another epic comeback but of smaller proportions. Na’Vi won the first map, Inferno, 11 – 13, and the second map, Dust II, 2 – 13. Mirage belonged to MOUZ (13 – 6) and it seemed like Ancient would belong to them as well. But after winning the first half 10 – 2, MOUZ lost the second half 1 – 11.

Despite not having the best KD score, Mihai “iM” Ivan was the best player on the server and won the MVP award.

Natus Vincere were one map down in the semifinals of IEM Rio against a HEROIC team that seemed unstoppable.

On the second map, the score was 9 – 3 after the first half, which further increased everyone’s conviction that this was not Na’Vi’s tournament.

But despite all of this, Mihai “iM” Ivan and his teammates managed to turn the match around, winning 14 – 16 on Dust II and 6 – 13 on Mirage. The first map, Ancient, ended 13 – 9 in favor of HEROIC.

The best player on the server was Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy. But the highest KD score was achieved by Justinas “jL” Lekavicius: 60 – 47.

The Other Semifinal

Unfortunately for the Brazilian fans, their team, FURIA Esports, had no chance against MOUZ. The scores were 3 – 13 on Nuke and 3 – 13 on Mirage. Adam “torzsi” Torzsas was an absolute beast in this match, ending with a score of 40 – 10 and rating 2.0 of 2.06!

FURIA’s strategy was perfectly read by the Europeans, who probably studied their group stage matches and figured out most of their key tactics.

The Grand Final

In the Grand Final of IEM Rio 2024, Natus Vincere will have the opportunity to win their 4^th S-tier trophy in 2024. The matchup clearly favors them. The two teams two times in 2024 and Na’Vi won both matches.

In the last three tournaments it competed in, the Ukrainian organization made it to the Grand Final. However, it only won one time. Both Team Vitality and G2 Esports proved that Na’Vi’s roster is not unbeatable.

But the problem here is that MOUZ did poorly at ESL Pro League S20 just one month ago, finishing 17^th – 20^th. Overall, their 2024 results have been good. They won EPL S19 and BetBoom Dacha Belgrade, and finished in the top four at five other events.

This will be a best-of-five Grand Final, so both teams will be tested on maps they’re not entirely comfortable with.