Counter-Strike has always prided itself on being open. No franchise fees, no closed leagues, any team can make it. In 2025 Valve made that principle official, and the tool it uses is a ranking system called the Valve Regional Standings, or VRS.
If you've wondered why a team that just won a big event still ended up in the first stage of a Major, or why tournament organisers talk so much about "VRS points", this is how it works.
What the VRS is
The VRS is Valve's official ranking of CS2 teams. It's divided into regions: Europe, the Americas and Asia, plus a global list. Each team is assigned to one region, based on where most of its players live.
The rankings are built from match results at Valve-sanctioned events, meaning tournaments that follow Valve's rules. Official updates come out on the first Monday of each month, and the data behind them is refreshed almost daily.
How teams earn points
The VRS isn't a simple "win more, rank higher" table. A team's score is built from four factors:
- Bounty offered. How valuable a team is to beat, based on its own recent success, including prize money won.
- Bounty collected. The total value of the teams you've beaten. Beating a top team is worth far more than beating a team nobody has heard of.
- Opponent network. How broad and strong the set of teams you've beaten is. Winning against many different good teams counts for more than beating the same weak opponents again and again.
- LAN wins. Wins at in-person events. Matches played on LAN carry much more weight than online ones.
These are combined into a starting score, which is then adjusted by head-to-head results, a bit like an Elo rating in chess. Results from about the last six months count, and newer results weigh more than older ones. So a team that was dominant a year ago but has gone quiet will slide down.
How it decides Major invites
Since 2025, all 32 teams at a Major are invited straight from the VRS. There are no separate regional qualifier tournaments anymore. Shortly before each Major (usually six to eight weeks), Valve takes a snapshot of the standings, and invites go out region by region.
Where you're ranked also decides where you start. A Major has three Swiss-format stages before the playoffs. The highest-ranked teams are invited straight into Stage 3, the next group into Stage 2, and the rest start in Stage 1. Europe gets the most invites, reflecting its strength in the game, while the Americas and Asia get fewer.
That's how the IEM Cologne Major in June 2026 was filled, and it's how invites for the PGL Singapore Major (November 25 to December 13) are decided.
Why it changed the whole season
The VRS came with a set of Valve rules for tournament organisers. Organisers can no longer run closed leagues with permanent partner teams. Invites to their events have to come from the VRS or from open qualifiers.
That changed the calendar in a few ways:
- Every event matters. Since VRS points come from sanctioned events throughout the year, smaller tournaments now have real value for climbing teams.
- No guaranteed spots. A famous organisation with a big fanbase can't buy or negotiate its way into top events anymore. It has to keep its ranking up.
- Paths for new teams. An unknown team that wins online events and then upsets a few big names on LAN can climb into Major contention within months.
Criticism
Not everyone loves it. Because the system rewards wins against strong opponents and LAN wins, teams in smaller regions can struggle to collect points: there are fewer big LAN events nearby, and travelling to Europe is expensive. Some teams also argue that the formula is hard to follow, which makes it difficult to plan a season. Valve has adjusted the model over time, and it will probably keep doing so.
The short version
If you want to know who's going to the next Major, look at the VRS. It's the closest thing CS2 has to an official league table, and since 2025 it's the only door into the biggest events in the game.
For CS2 news, see the CS2 hub. For live matches and the current top-tier tournaments, check the Esports page.