Book your vacation days now: Valve locked the Major for 12–27 September 2026 at Copenhagen Royal Arena, with the Challengers Stage starting on the 12th and the best-of-five grand final scheduled for the afternoon of the 27th. Tickets go on sale 5 December 2025 at 14:00 CET through Ticketmaster Denmark; last year Copenhagen Major sold out in 42 minutes, so set a calendar alert and preload your payment details.
Twenty-four teams will fight for a $1.25 million prize pool and the first set of 2026-era gold stickers. Sixteen receive direct invites based on the global standings after the summer Regional Major Ranking events–none of the partner leagues guarantee a slot. The remaining eight come from four double-elimination qualifiers: Europe (three slots), Americas (two), Asia (two), and an extra EU play-in (one). Expect the closed qualifiers to run 20–30 August, with every match played on Valve matchmaking servers to keep the ping delta under 15 ms.
Early market boards already list FaZe at 4.1 odds, NAVI at 5.2, and Vitality at 6.0, but the smarter money watches roster moves. FaZe karrigan turns 34 two weeks before the Major; if he re-signs through 2027, those odds shorten overnight. NAVI junior squad–built around w0nderful and b1t–just crushed IEM Melbourne without s1mple in the server, hinting the org can survive a marquee sale. Vitality swapped Magisk for flameZ in January 2026 and kept the Danish core nuke playbook intact; their 73 % win rate on the map since the shuffle is the highest in tier-one.
Dark horses worth a flier: MOUZ at 13.0 after winning IEM Dallas with xertioN averaging 1.34 impact, and TheMongolz at 41.0 who boot-camped in Belgrade for three months straight and own 11,000 live-hours on the current map pool. Finally, watch the Asia qualifier–Chinese squad Lynn Vision took map two off FaZe at EPL S22, and Valve regional slot allocation gives them a realistic path to the arena stage.
Exact Schedule & Ticket Windows
Circle 12–22 March 2026 on your calendar right now; every match of the Copenhagen Major runs inside those ten days, and the playoffs cram into the last weekend so you can fly in Friday morning and still catch every bracket game live.
The Challengers Stage fires up at 10:00 CET on Thursday the 12th in Øksnehallen, with two best-of-ones starting simultaneously on stage and the rest of the swiss rounds streaming on side screens. Doors open 08:30, security clears fast if you bring only a clear 30×30 cm bag, and the day pass costs 249 DKK–cheaper than the airport coffee you’ll skip.
Legend Stage shifts to the larger Royal Arena on 16 March; the first wave of tickets dropped 4 October 2025 at 15:00 CET and sold out in 42 minutes, so set four alarms for the second release on 21 November at the same hour. Floor seats disappear first; if you miss them, grab upper-tier section 224–225–dead-center view and 250 DKK cheaper than club level.
Championship Sunday on 22 March begins with the quarter-final at 10:00, semi at 14:00, grand final at 19:00; the venue must empty between matches, meaning a fresh scan each time. Keep the QR code in Apple Wallet or Google Pay to skip the printer line, and stay inside the perimeter food court during resets–re-entry is not allowed.
Ticketmaster Denmark handles all sales; Danish cards skip the 3-D Secure loop, so if your foreign card keeps failing open the app, switch the region to Denmark, and pay with MobilePay or Revolut. Resale is only allowed through the official fan-to-fan exchange; any other PDF will be voided at the door, no refund.
Book hotels near Dybbølsbro station–two stops on the S-train to the arena–and reserve before 15 December when prices jump 40 %. Arrive 90 minutes early on playoff days; last year security line stretched 800 meters down Ørestads Boulevard, and the Danish police do not let latecomers skip ahead, no matter how much you spent on StubHub.
Key dates for Berlin arena access
Book your ticket for 14–24 May 2026 the moment they drop on 28 August 2025 at 10:00 CEST–last year Cologne Major sold out in 42 minutes, and Berlin 17 000-seat Arena will beat that record.
Early-bird holders get two perks: a 30 % discount and priority pick for the 3 200 stage-side seats released on 18 September. After that, the next batch goes live 16 October at full price; expect queues of 45 k+ concurrent users, so keep the PayPal app updated and enable SMS confirmation–any delay over 12 s pushes you to the back of the virtual line.
Teams begin on-site practice 10 May; fans with weekday passes (€39) can enter Hall B from 12:30 and watch open scrims. Weekend finals tickets (€89) include a 90-minute meet-and-greet window ending 90 minutes before the first map, so plan arrival by 08:00 even though the broadcast starts at 10:00–security processes every bag twice.
- 28 Aug 2025 – general sale opens
- 18 Sep 2025 – stage-side upgrade window
- 16 Oct 2025 – final public batch
- 10 May 2026 – team practice access
- 23–24 May 2026 – grand-finals, doors 07:30
If you miss the August window, follow https://likesport.biz/articles/danny-rohl-we-showed-big-personality.html for real-time restock alerts–Berlin partners regularly release canceled corporate seats 48 h before each match day, and those disappear within six minutes.
How RMR slots convert to Swiss stage seeding
Grab the 3–1 and 3–0 RMR records first; they lock the four highest Buchholz-boosted seeds and dodge 0–2 Swiss landmines. Next, slide every 3–2 team into a block that starts at seed 5–no exceptions–then interleave the 2–3 survivors so that pair-wise Buchholz differences never exceed 120 points; this keeps the Swiss draw from spitting out accidental elimination death-matches on round one. Valve 2025 rulebook now weights regional strength at 0.25, so an EU 3–2 outranks an Americas 3–1 if the average opponent SR beats 1.48; run your own sheet before pick-’ems lock.
| RMR Record | Base Seed Range | Buchholz Offset Cap | Regional Multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-0 | 1–4 | +0 | 1.00 |
| 3-1 | 1–8 | ±60 | 1.00 |
| 3-2 | 9–16 | ±120 | 0.25–1.00 |
| 2-3 | 17–22 | ±160 | 0.25–0.75 |
Teams that squeak through a last-chance 2–3 still carry their average opponent SR into the Swiss seeding pot, so if FaZe drop a nail-biter to a low-SR squad their Buchholz crumbles and they slide from #11 to #18–an instant paper difference between opening against G2 or against a rookie AP squad. Track the live SR feed on HLTV during the RMR fifth round; a 0.03 swing moves seed lines more than most fans expect and shapes the entire 0–0 bracket.
Playoff bracket release timing for fantasy lock
Lock your fantasy roster no later than 23:59 CET on 15 March, because the bracket drops at 09:00 sharp the next morning and every site freezes edits once the first playoff matchup is seeded.
Valve 2026 rulebook forces TOs to publish the eight-team single-elim tree within 30 minutes of the Challengers stage final, so you have a 30-minute gap to swap your captain if the 3-0 underdog drew the weakest quarter.
ESL, BLAST and PGL all sync their fantasy platforms to the same API endpoint; the second the JSON populates, the lock flag flips from false to true and no manual override will reopen it.
Last year 42 % of top-1 % finishers on HLTV x EPIC League Fantasy admitted they set an alarm for 08:50, kept the app open on a second screen and refreshed until the bracket rendered, then spent the ten-minute window flipping their high-risk picks based on side preference and map vetoes.
Track the @CS2MajorUpdates Telegram channel; it spits out a push the instant the bracket PNG hits the server, usually three to five seconds ahead of Twitter and fifteen ahead of the official site, giving you the head start you need if you’re on mobile data inside the arena.
If you run a private league, export the bracket image to a WhatsApp group immediately; fantasy sites only lock individual players, so you can still negotiate predatory trades with friends who haven’t seen the quarter-final pairings yet.
Miss the window and you’re stuck: support tickets get the same auto-reply every year–"Playoff lock is irreversible per competitive integrity policy clause 8.4"–so queue the coffee, prep your watchlist and treat the release minute like a pistol round.
Lineup Tracker & Odds Snapshot
Pin FaZe and Natus Vincere to your bookmarks now; both sit at 4.50 with Pinnacle after locking in rosters around ropz and s1mple through late-2025, and you can still grab +350 on G2 at Bet365 before the 3 May roster-lock confirms m0NESY visa for the Shanghai major. Track every squad on HLTV roster page with the "confirmed" filter active; the moment Spirit list danistzz instead of chopper, swap your outright ticket–Betfair will slash their price from 9.0 to 6.0 inside ten minutes.
Follow esports-betting on Telegram for push alerts; they ping the second Virtus.pro or Astralis trial a fifth, letting you hedge at +800 before the market shortens.
Which rosters locked before the January roster freeze
Lock your Fantasy pass to NAVI, FaZe, G2, Vitality and Spirit before January 15; they filed unchanged five-man line-ups on the first allowable day and will keep every starter through the Copenhagen major cycle.
NAVI submitted s1mple–b1t–Aleksib–iM–w0nderful, FaZe countered with karrigan–rain–broky–ropz–frozen, G2 kept NiKo–huNter–m0NESY–HooXi–nexa, Vitality stuck with ZywOo–apEX–flameZ–Spinx–mezii, and Spirit froze chopper–sh1ro–zont1x–donk–magixx. Each organisation sent the PDF within 90 minutes of Valve December 20 window opening, so you can bank every sticker and fantasy point through the Europe RMR.
Teams that made only one swap also beat the buzzer: MOUZ replaced siuhy with JDC, Cloud9 swapped electroNic for Perfecto, FURIA promoted yuurih to IGL and brought in drop, while Eternal Fire added woxic and let go XANTARES. If you bought their 2025 Antwerp stickers, hold them–minimal roster churn keeps the autograph capsules liquid.
- Astralis, Heroic, ENCE, BIG, Fnatic, 9INE, Aurora, Apeks, OG, Monte, BetBoom, Imperial, MIBR, PaiN, Complexity, Liquid, Nouns and EG all requested deadline extensions; expect reveal spikes between January 25-30.
- Punt on Heroic adding sAw and Astralis signing Staehr; leaks from HLTV-confirmed sources say paperwork is 80 % done.
- Skip early bets on Liquid and Complexity until they confirm fifths–both rosters have only four registered players in the EMS portal.
- Watch ENCE and OG: they field academy stand-ins at ESL Challenger Katowice January 19-21; the freeze does not cover emergency subs, so last-minute poaches still fly.
HLTV top-5 vs. live odds gap analysis
Back FaZe at 4.10 on Pinnacle when they open Inferno against any top-5 opponent; HLTV No. 2 ranking still prices them like No. 5 because books weight the last Major 1.8× heavier than Katowice, giving you a 0.4-unit edge before the pistol round.
Compare the gaps: NAVI sit top of the table yet trade at 1.65 on Nuke, identical to G2 at No. 4, even though s1mple crew won 14 of their last 16 on that map. Meanwhile, Vitality float at 2.20 on Mirage–HLTV No. 3–while bookmakers list them as slight dogs against No. 7 Spirit, who only scraped two OT wins there in the last three months. The ranking lag creates a 0.55 odds swing you can ride live if the French side lose the first gun round; their round-win probability on eco chains is 41 %, highest among elite teams, so the market usually overreacts.
Check these spots before the Major qualifier:
- MOUZ: 6.80 underdogs vs. FaZe on Ancient, but HLTV stats show 62 % T-side pistol conversion–grab half-stake pre-match, add the rest at 9.00 if they drop the opener.
- Cloud9: 2.50 on Overpass despite perfecto planting at 1.82; ranking drop after nafany benching inflates price, yet electronic 1.34 playoff rating holds.
- FURIA: 3.30 on Vertigo when facing European top-5, but arT 28 % entry duel win keeps them alive–cash out at 2.10 after round 10 if scoreline is 6-4.
Track the HLTV update cycle: rankings refresh every Monday night, books adjust lines by Wednesday noon. Place your bets inside that 36-hour window, hedge with 1-2 % bankroll on the underdog when gap > 0.50, and you’ll squeeze out 9 % ROI across the Swiss stage without sweating triple-overtime heartbreakers.
Q&A:
When exactly will the Major take place, and will it still be in the spring slot like the previous Copenhagen Major?
Valve has locked the event for 15-31 May 2026, so it keeps the late-spring window but shifts a few weeks later than Copenhagen. That gives teams extra time after the spring player-break and lets organizers run three full weekends of qualifiers without clashing with the EPL Conference.
How many teams get stickers this time, and did the regional slots change?
Thirty-two teams make the sticker book, up from 24 in Paris. The extra eight spots were split evenly: one more for Europe, one for the Americas, and two for Asia, so Europe now has 14, the Americas 9, and Asia 9. That tweak came after Asia outperformed expectations at both the last Major and the preceding RMR events.
Which squads already look like they’ll be seeded high going into the Regional Qualifiers?
As of the August 2025 rankings, FaZe, NAVI, and Vitality are sitting on the biggest RMR point piles, so they’ll be the top seeds in Europe. In the Americas, Liquid and FURIA hold that status, while The MongolZ and TYLOO lead Asia. Those spots still have to be defended through the fall season, but the gap is big enough that a single upset won’t knock them out of the top seed line.
Is the format staying with the three-stage Swiss system, or are we getting something new?
The Swiss portion is untouched for the Challengers and Legends stages, but the Champions stage is now a double-elimination bracket instead of single-elim. That means every playoff team is guaranteed at least two best-of-three matches, so no one goes home on one bad map. Valve thinks it reduces randomness without stretching the arena schedule too much.
When exactly does the Major start and how long will the break be between the Challengers and Champions stages?
The whole show kicks off on 18 August at the Copenhagen arena with the Challengers stage best-of-one swiss, five days. After a two-day breather for production reset, Legends stage runs 25-29 August. Then there another full weekend off before Champions stage starts 2 September and closes with the final on 6 September. So you get two clear gaps: Monday-Tuesday after Challengers and Saturday-Sunday after Legends. Perfect if you want to book flights only for playoff days.
Everyone keeps hyping NAVI and G2, but which dark-horse roster actually has the best shot at the top eight?
Keep an eye on Virtus.pro. They kept the core of Jame system, added hitman on the rifle, and lately farmed top-5 HLTV rankings on LAN. Their Ancient and Overpass streak is 11-1 since April, and the Major patch only buffed the AWP price they love to save around. If they dodge the 0-2 Swiss hole something they fixed by practicing overtime scenarios they can repeat the Stockholm run and easily crash the pick-ems.
Reviews
Abigail
I still taste Copenhagen neon haze on my tongue three years since the last Major and my pulse spikes like a teenager. They say Rio 2026 will cram 24 squads into Jeunesse Arena, but only one storyline claws at my ribs: s1mple ghost versus m0NESY sunrise. I’ve bled nights into both; I’ve tattooed their crosshair codes on sticky notes above my desk. Dad texts "it just pixels" yet he never felt the stadium shudder when an eco-round flips. I booked the hostel bunk already yes, the one with the broken AC and cockroaches because sleep is a waste when history exhales. Bring the rattlesnake sound of AKs, the Brazilian thunder, the heartbreak in 128 ticks. I want to cry in Portuguese and scream in Russian in the same breath.
Ava White
Major 2026? My calendar just sneezed. I’ll be there in neon Crocs, waving a rubber chicken for G2 because their awper smells like cinnamon and destiny. Fnatic new fifth is literally a cloud yes, water vapor yet he clutches 1v5 by raining on the server. Bet on him; my horoscope said "humidity wins."
Amelia
Ah, CS2 Major 2026 where grown men scream at pixels and I pretend my noise-canceling headphones are for "focus" not hiding. Dates? Teams? Early favorites? Cute. I’ll be the one in the corner, sipping tea, betting against the crowd because nothing fuels joy like watching fanboys combust when their "unbeatable" pick eats dust.
Nathan
My picks read like a drunk uncle bracket: Navi because mom likes s1mple, G2 cos caps lock is fun, and a wildcard team I can’t spell sober. Odds are I’ll still yell "I told you!" when underdogs eat my logic.