How Valve's CS2 Major invitation system actually works

Valve's CS2 Major supplemental rulebook describes a fixed structure rather than a single list of invitees: 32 teams split across three stages, with every place filled through the Valve Regional Standings (VRS) rather than direct selection by a tournament organiser.

The rulebook states that 16 teams are invited to Stage 1, 8 to Stage 2 and 8 to Stage 3, each drawn from the VRS for their region. The three regional lists used for this purpose are Europe, Americas and Asia; a separate global version of the VRS exists only to seed the stages once invitations have already been accepted.

How many of those Stage 2 and Stage 3 places go to each region is not fixed in advance. Valve ties it directly to the previous Major: a region earns one additional Stage 2 invite for every team of that region that reached Stage 3 last time, and one additional Stage 3 invite for every team that reached the Playoffs. The allocation therefore shifts after every Major rather than staying constant.

This is why a specific allocation table, such as the one Valve published for Winter 2025, cannot be read forward. It reflects how one region's teams performed at one previous Major and applies only to that event. Readers should treat any such table as a historical snapshot, not as a guide to how many slots a region will receive at a future Major.

A roster's region is decided by where the majority of its five players are assigned, with Europe taking priority in a tie, then Americas, then Asia. A roster only qualifies for that regional assignment if it has not appeared on a different region's VRS list in the preceding three months, which prevents teams from shifting rosters between regions purely to chase a more favourable invite.

Invitations go out in a set order: Stage 3 slots first, then Stage 2, then Stage 1. If an invited roster declines or has broken up, the next-ranked roster on that region's VRS list receives the slot instead. Only if no further eligible rosters remain does Valve fall back on a last-chance regional qualifier to fill the gap.

Rules for other Counter-Strike tournaments

Separately, Valve's tournament operation requirements govern any organiser running a licensed CS2 event, whether or not it is a Major. Organisers choose whether to run a Ranked or Unranked tournament, and the obligations differ sharply between the two.

Unranked tournaments can invite or select rosters however the organiser likes, but total compensation is capped at $100,000 per event, or $250,000 across all of an organiser's unranked events in a year, according to Valve's published requirements.

Ranked tournaments, whose results feed into the VRS, must instead invite sequentially down a chosen VRS list from a declared starting rank, using the most current version of that list as of the event's invite date. Operators can subdivide the Americas and Asia lists into subregions such as North America, South America, Oceania, West Asia and East Asia, provided rosters have a plurality of citizenships from that subregion.

Ranked tournaments may also issue Wildcard Invites: two for every eight VRS invitations given out. A roster only qualifies for a wildcard if it sits outside the global top 12 and either had three players on a top-12 VRS roster within the preceding six months, or finished first or second at a tournament of equal or lesser tier in that same period.

Because both frameworks change in detail with each published version, Valve directs organisers and readers to the dated source files rather than any single snapshot: the VRS invitation lists are maintained at ValveSoftware's counter-strike_regional_standings repository, and the tournament rules themselves are version-controlled on GitHub, with the applicable version being whichever was current as of a given tournament's Additional Information deadline.

Anyone checking who is actually invited to a named Major or ranked event should consult those dated repository files directly for that event, rather than relying on a historical allocation example such as Winter 2025's.