CS2’s tournament calendar is dense — there’s a competitive event happening somewhere in the world most weeks of the year — but a small number of tournaments carry significantly more weight than the rest. Understanding that hierarchy makes it much easier to know which results actually matter.
Valve Majors: the top tier
The Valve-sponsored Major is the most prestigious tournament type in Counter-Strike, a tradition that carried over from CS:GO into CS2. Majors are notable for having a large playoff field, substantial prize pools, and a qualification structure that pulls teams from region-specific qualifiers around the world rather than relying on invitations alone. Because of the broad qualification path, Majors tend to produce more competitive variance than smaller invite-only events — underdogs advancing further than expected is a recurring storyline.
Tier-one non-Major events
Below Majors, a handful of recurring events organized by companies like ESL and BLAST run at a similarly high competitive level, drawing most of the same top teams even though they carry different formats and prize structures than a Major. IEM Cologne (covered in more detail on its own page in this section) is one of the best known of these.
Regional and online events
Beneath the top tier, there’s a much larger volume of regional qualifiers, online cups and smaller LAN events that feed players and teams into the bigger tournaments, or that give lower-ranked teams competitive reps between major events.
Where to check the current schedule
Tournament dates, locations and formats shift from year to year, and new events get added to the calendar regularly, so we don’t publish a fixed schedule here. HLTV.org maintains an up-to-date events calendar covering everything from Majors down to smaller online qualifiers, and it’s the most reliable single source for checking what’s currently happening or coming up next. Liquipedia’s Counter-Strike wiki is useful for historical tournament results and format details from past events.
Why tournament tier matters for research
A team’s results at a Major carry more research weight than the same result at a smaller online event, simply because of the strength of competition involved. When comparing recent form across teams, it’s worth checking not just whether a team has been winning, but what tier of event those wins came against — a strong run through a regional qualifier says less than a deep Major playoff run against the top teams in the world.