Right, now that we’ve gotten the dross like Legacy, Passion UA, and most likely BC.Game out of the way - it’s time to watch some real teams play CS.

Joining the already advanced G2, 3DMAX, and PARIVISION (as well as Astralis or NRG) will be Vitality, The MongolZ, Spirit, NAVI, FaZe, MOUZ, Falcons, and FURIA, and we might go out on a limb to say one of those teams will be winning the whole thing.

In fact, we’ll go as far as to say Vitality will win it.

Their exit from Bounty may have been unimpressive, but did the Major teach you nothing? These guys are still the best team in the world, and for as long as hally is the coach of Team Spirit and Falcons keep plugging away with TeSeS, they will be for a while.

There will, of course, be plenty of intrigue surrounding Falcons, who will be expected to perform even better with kyousuke back in the team. Likewise, we’ll all be expecting more from FURIA and Spirit, who both probably should’ve beaten an inexperienced team like PARIVISION in Malta.

We’re pretty excited to see MOUZ, too, because we’re pretty sure they must’ve been cooking a michelin star meal if they were going to miss a tournament as important as Bounty.

No, but seriously, though, this is a big event for MOUZ to prove they mean business after a disastrous end to 2025.

Other than that, The MongolZ with cobrazera will be interesting to see, and FaZe being bad will definitely be delightful, but we don’t expect much to change from the end of 2025. NAVI should be better, but that’s not saying much, and PARIVISION in a real environment will also be interesting. The rest of the Stage 1 teams, though? Well, they'd better start eyeing up the flights home they’re after.

As we said in this week’s Deep Dive: Counter-Strike is a simple game. 10 players run around a map headshotting each other for 45 minutes, and at the end, Vitality always win.

You’d do well to remember that.