CS2 Majors for Traders

What is a CS2 Major?

A CS2 Major is one of the Valve-sponsored championship events, the biggest tournaments in Counter-Strike. Liquipedia keeps the full list of Valve Majors. Since the BLAST.tv Austin Major in 2025, each Major has had 32 teams. Our glossary has a short Major definition.

For traders, a Major matters for a simple reason: Valve releases new items around each one. Team stickers, player autograph stickers, souvenirs and a Viewer Pass all appear, and older items tied to the teams and players can move too.

This guide covers the item side only. For how capsule prices have behaved in the months and years after a Major, read how sticker capsules behave after Majors. We do not repeat it here.

When is the next CS2 Major?

The next Major is PGL Major Singapore 2026. Liquipedia lists it from 25 November to 13 December 2026, with the Playoffs at the Singapore Indoor Stadium in Kallang, 32 teams and a $1,250,000 prize pool (Liquipedia).

Dates and places are from the Liquipedia pages for Austin, Budapest, Cologne, Singapore and Buenos Aires. Winners are from Valve: Vitality won Austin and Budapest (The Year of the Bees), and Falcons beat FURIA 3-0 in the Cologne final (Team Falcons' Finale).

Valve had not announced items for the Singapore Major in any post we checked up to 25 September 2026. Past Majors had their items announced a week or more before the first match. For example, the Budapest items were announced on 12 November 2025, and the event started on 24 November.

What items does a Major add to the market?

Up to and including Budapest 2025, a Major brought the same set of items. The Budapest announcement is a good example:

• Team and autograph stickers. "Tournament stickers, featuring logos of every team and signatures of every player participating in the Major." They came in capsules, such as the Budapest 2025 Legends Sticker Capsule in the table further down.
• A Champions Autograph Capsule after the final, with stickers signed by the winning team.
• A Viewer Pass. It includes "a coin that can be upgraded by playing the Pick'Em challenge." Pass holders "can earn and purchase Souvenir Tokens, which can be redeemed for a Souvenir from the match of your choice."
• Souvenir packages for the maps played. From Austin 2025, Playoff matches gave Souvenir Highlight Packages, with a charm showing a video highlight from the match (Capture the Moment).
• Sticker Slabs, added with Budapest: "charms that let you show off a sticker with no commitment."

Valve also shares money from these sales. Its posts during each Major repeat that 50% of tournament item sales go to the tournament organizer, teams and players.

How did the Cologne 2026 Major Shop change things?

IEM Cologne 2026 broke the old pattern. Valve's announcement replaced capsules with a Major Shop where you "directly get any sticker you want (at prices set by demand)."

How the shop worked, in Valve's words:

• Tokens. You buy tokens and redeem them for stickers. The minimum purchase was 100 tokens, "which is $0.99 USD."
• Demand pricing. "If one sticker is purchased disproportionately more than another, its price will go up and the other sticker's price will go down." Prices in tokens were the same for everyone worldwide.
• A price drop refund. If a sticker's price fell by 25 tokens or more within 24 hours of your purchase, you got the difference back in tokens.
• No capsules. Valve gave two reasons: players said they would rather buy stickers directly, and "players in certain regions cannot purchase sticker capsules."
• Souvenir-O-Matic. Instead of random souvenir packages, you take "any normal or Souvenir quality weapon" you own, pick a completed match and a player, and get it back as a Souvenir "with gold team, autograph, and map stickers applied." The price depends on demand for those gold stickers and the rarity of the weapon.

Later updates changed the shop again. After the final, Valve added Champions Autograph stickers for Falcons and Highlight Charms. On 29 July 2026, Valve released a lower-priced Ranked Series of stickers, saying the first dynamic pricing "didn't produce reasonable prices" (Cologne 2026: Ranked Series). The same post says the Cologne 2026 Shop is available until 29 September 2026.

For a trader, the key point is supply. With capsules, how many of each sticker existed depended on pack odds and how many capsules were opened. In the Major Shop, a sticker's supply is simply how many people bought it before the shop closed. Our capsule guide covers what that may mean for prices.

How does Pick'Em work?

Pick'Em is Valve's prediction game for each Major. You predict results for each stage, and correct picks upgrade your coin.

At Cologne 2026, per Valve: "Purchase and activate a Cologne 2026 Viewer Pass, and you'll receive a 2026 Cologne Major Challenge Coin. Play the Pick'Em Challenge to upgrade your Challenge Coin from Bronze to Silver, Gold, or Diamond and with each upgrade you'll get 300 tokens that you can redeem for the stickers or souvenirs of your choice."

At Budapest 2025, the reward was different: an upgraded coin earned "extra souvenir packages" instead of tokens. So the Pick'Em reward depends on the Major. Picks also have deadlines: Valve's posts remind players that Playoff picks "must be submitted prior to the start of the first Playoff match."

Pick'Em rewards are items tied to that Major, so their value follows the same market as the rest of the Major's items. We do not work out the value of a Viewer Pass, because Valve does not publish its price on the web pages we checked.

Where do past Major items trade today?

This table shows the lowest cash listing and the lowest Steam Market listing for a few items from recent Majors, on one day. It is a snapshot, not a price history.

Source: CSRated price snapshot, 27 September 2026.

Two things stand out. First, most capsules from these Majors listed for well under a dollar, and a 2023 capsule was cheaper than a 2025 one. Older does not automatically mean more expensive. Second, souvenir packages from the same Major can differ a lot by map. The Rio 2022 Nuke package listed for about four times the Rio 2022 Dust II package ($2.57) that day.

Every item in the table listed higher on the Steam Market than for cash. Keep in mind that Steam Market money stays in your Steam Wallet and cannot be withdrawn, per the Community Market FAQ.

What drives Major item prices?

We keep this short, because the capsule guide covers it in depth. The forces are supply, demand and Valve's rules.

• Supply ends when the sale ends. Past capsules were sold for months, then discounted and removed, as the capsule guide shows. The Cologne 2026 Shop has a set end date. After that, no new copies can be made.
• Demand follows teams, players and moments. A sticker from a champion team or a famous play draws more buyers. Our sticker value guide shows what stickers can add to a skin.
• Valve changes the format. Cologne 2026 is the proof. Valve called the shop something it is "exploring," so Singapore could work differently again.

Every factor on that list can go against you. A team can fall apart, a format can change, and an item that looked scarce can turn out to be common.

What should traders check around a Major?

• The item format. Read Valve's announcement for each Major before assuming it works like the last one. The Cologne and Budapest systems were very different.
• Sale end dates. Valve posts them. The Cologne 2026 Shop closes on 29 September 2026.
• The 7-day wait. Items bought from the in-game store, and items bought on the Steam Market or received in trades, have a 7-day re-trade and re-market restriction, per the October 2024 release notes.
• Fees. Selling on the Steam Market costs a 5% Steam fee plus a 10% game fee, per the Community Market FAQ, and pays in wallet funds. The Steam fee calculator and the trade profit calculator show what you keep.
• Your own risk limit. Holding Major items is speculation, not a sure thing. Read are CS2 skins a good investment before putting money in.

Opening capsules or souvenir packages for a chance at a valuable item is a random draw, not an investment. If you do it, set a limit first. Our responsible gaming page explains how.