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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Intercontinental peace won’t be achieved this summer.
Sportswashing has entered the filthy streets of Paris, Passion UA have given it all up, and Falcons have the free-est event of their lives - or have they?
If you thought sportswashing making us okay with Saudi Arabia is fine, they’re now going to try to make us accept the French.
Makes us gag just thinking about it.
That’s right, the owners of the Esports World Cup have decided against going back to Saudi Arabia for human rights concerns and ethical reasons. At least, that’s what they would have said if they gave a monkey’s.
The actual reason is the war in Iran and the difficulty of flying in and out, which is still sort of a human rights concern (the right to not be part of a bombing attack). France, obviously, is far less likely to be bombed, largely because that would be the biggest renovation job the country has had in years.
Look, it’ll be easier to get to for players and talent, the country is marginally more ethical, and it’ll be easier to watch for the majority of viewers. That’s all great news.
The food will be better too - providing you get the Eurostar to London for a Greggs after the games.
Aussie teams have never really done well at the Major, but at least they’ve “f-cked your pickems.” Warra trophy for Australia.
But Australian teams at the upcoming Cologne Major shouldn’t worry about making it to Stage 2 of the Major. With their form, they should be sh-tting themselves about the prospect of not even winning a map.
So, if you feel like betting on THUNDER dOWNUNDER (2.85), or FlyQuest (4.00) to go 0-3 at Stage 1 of the Major, sign up to Razed.
Odds at time of writing.
This event has been going on for two days, and there’s been about a hundred games, none of which make any sense whatsoever.
Possibly the biggest shock of the opening round was TYLOO beating MOUZ - but because the opening round was BO1, it’s not all that surprising and kinda kills the vibe a little bit.
Welcome back, 2015. We missed you. Can’t you give us back the Batman: Arkham series instead? Much better.
TYLOO went on to lose to Legacy and paiN to be dumped out in the lower bracket (one step further than BC.Game, who also lost to paiN), leaving MOUZ to face paiN for qualification tomorrow, and Legacy will face Falcons in the upper bracket, who avoided all of the booby traps set for them. An untidy, but functional, win over M80 got them there.
M80 took a map off of MOUZ, too - even if they got fisted in the other two, they look sort of dangerous. They ran Falcons close twice, which is more than we expect from an NA team, really.
Speaking of… is it even newsworthy when Liquid lose any more?
They lost 2-1 to The MongolZ (who had lost to B8 in a BO3, worrying) after an opening round loss to PARIVISION in a BO1. PARIVISION are all over the shop at the moment, but they’ve bumbled their way to the lower bracket final against The MongolZ by knocking Lynn Vision out.
NIP managed to lose to Lynn Vision, by the way, which is almost as bad as 3DMAX losing to Liquid.
MIBR and B8 are in the upper bracket final, for crying out loud. This event is wild. B8, as we mentioned, beat The MongolZ, and MIBR 2-0’d PARIVISION really comfortably. We know nothing. We understand even less.
If Falcons manage to not win this event, they really should go back to the drawing board and start again. Or sign one more star.
We hoped that the karrigan move might work and push Falcons to actually win trophies instead of just contending for them. Sadly, karrigan’s individual level has gone from poor to semi-professional at best. So why didn’t Falcons give NiKo the captain’s armband? That was the plan, wasn’t it?
Don’t you just love it when Valve drops the sticker update right after the newsletter is already finished?
Anyways.
The Cologne stickers are out, and they honestly look pretty cool. We love the lead glass/Cathedral aesthetic, so props to ESL for that one. However, this update is not just a sticker update.
Capsules are gone.
You can get any stickers you want directly from the new in-game Major shop now, which you will have to purchase using “Tokens”, the new version of Souvenir Tokens we’ve had in previous Majors.
But how will the price of stickers be determined? Well, guess the Terminals should’ve been a clue. Valve apparently really are suckers for market capitalism. The price of stickers is now set by you, the consumer.
Demand goes up? Price goes up. Demand goes down? Price goes down. It’s that damned stonks meme all over again.
Valve have been ever so gracious in protecting you from market crashes however. If your sticker loses 25 tokens in value in the 24 hours after you’ve got it, you’ll get an automatic refund for the difference. Thanks Valve, very cool.
Souvenir crates are now also in the past.
To get a souvenir, you must now provide your own weapon from your inventory and select what match, map, and player you want. The game will strip your weapon of any stickers and apply the ones from the match you selected. You can now repurchase your own weapon but with new sticker, again with a price set by demand.
Additionally, there have been some changes to how royalties for these stickers are distributed among teams - it now depends on your VRS standings before and during the Major, and your placement in it once the event is over. Interesting for teams and players, not so much for us.
We get Valve’s idea of moving away from lootboxes, as they’ve become quite unpopular in many countries’ gambling legislation, but this doesn’t feel like the move.
This might be the final time we can make that joke…
Sources revealed to HLTV on Wednesday that everyone’s favourite United Nations General Assembly of a team, Passion UA, have decided to open up their current Counter-Strike team for bidding.
This comes just days after the team decided to pull out of the BC.Game Masters Championship Season 2 LAN event in Portugal, and just a few months after the blockbuster signings of try and Senzu, the latter on a since-expired loan.
It’s an end to the team almost as abrupt as its beginnings, taking just about two years to go from humble beginnings well outside serious competition to competing at tier one events, and even Majors.
There hasn’t been much of that in 2026, though. The team narrowly missed the Major after a loss to Sangal in Urban Riga Open - an event the team won in the previous Major cycle - meaning they were the 11th highest ranked team on the Americas ranking.
Worse yet, that Sangal team had smooya…
Last place finishes in three IEM events, an inability to compete in tier two LANs, and failing to even make the grand final in a Fragadelphia event mean one thing… this team is sh-t. Selling it is probably for the best.
Why it’s gone this poorly for the team isn’t entirely clear to us, but we suspect it has something to do with the incredible diversity of this team. Never before in CS history has a team with this many culture clashes succeeded, and that seems to still be the case.
Still, the pieces are very good, and there are plenty of moves we think should be at least considered. Perhaps JT can finally make the move to Team Liquid he was always destined for. If anyone’s shopping for two talented riflers, Kvem and sdy should be on that list, and we can see even nicx competing at a decent level on North American squads.
But the one guy we hope manages to finally catch a break is try… after finally being freed from Brazilian contract jail, he’s once again sat outside top-level play. When can this kid catch a break?
If Passion UA rebuild something new from the ashes of this lineup remains to be seen, but for now, we bid farewell to Oleksandr Zinchenko’s involvement in CS. Though you’d think if he charges $11,000 for a Cameo-video, he could afford to keep this roster a few more months…
