Hi, your friends at Challengermode know you like CS. CS BUZZ is the twice-weekly newsletter for people who live and breathe Counter-Strike. CS BUZZ NOW (on Tuesdays) lists what the community's talking about right now. CS BUZZ RETRO (on Fridays) revisits the moments that made CS what it is.

July 28, 2026 · Period: July 21-27, 2026
Edited by Stoyan Ovcharov and Karl Mikael Cakste

BLAST Bounty Season 2's online stage just spent six days eating the favorites. Falcons, fresh off winning the Cologne Major, didn't make it past day two. Vitality and FURIA followed them out the door, leaving Spirit as the only team inside the world's top ten with a ticket to Malta. Behind the results sat two separate storylines worth knowing: a Liquid roster gamble that paid off immediately, and last month's sticker-revenue "catastrophe" finally claiming real jobs.

Scroll down and see what's buzzing, ranked by how loud the conversation actually got, not the loudest voices.

😱 Falcons won the Cologne Major a month ago. They didn't win a single BLAST Bounty match. Falcons, ranked world No. 1, blew a 9-3 lead on the Anubis decider and fell 2-1 to 100 Thieves on day two of the online stage. It was the loudest of several upsets that reshaped the entire field. Vitality (No. 2) lasted one round further before Team Liquid's rebuilt lineup, debuting new IGL Johnny "JT" Theodosiou, swept them 2-0. FURIA (No. 3) fell to newly rebranded DENDELE. 

By the time the eight-team Malta bracket was finalized on Sunday, Spirit stood alone as the tournament's only team ranked inside the world's top ten, joined by MOUZ, The MongolZ, FaZe, Astralis, paiN, Liquid, and 3DMAX. "It feels really good, it's a nice win to have," 100 Thieves' rain said after eliminating the reigning Major champions. Online CS struck again, and this time it took out three of the four teams anyone expected to win Malta before a single LAN map was played.

🔄 Kamil "siuhy" Szkaradek is out at Liquid after 15 months. His replacement's first match was a win over the No. 2 team in the world. Liquid benched siuhy on July 21, installing Johnny "JT" Theodosiou as in-game leader after a season that saw the org crash down the rankings, exit Majors through the online stage, and post one of the worst T-side win rates in the entire scene. It was Liquid's second roster swing of the summer, following the earlier benching of Roland "ultimate" Tomkowiak for Georgi "Jorko" Mitev. 

The new-look side debuted against Vitality at BLAST Bounty on July 24, a team ranked No. 45 in the world facing the No. 2 seed, and swept them 2-0 on Anubis and Nuke. Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski dropped a 1.52 rating across the series and a 2.01 outing on Nuke alone. "I'm still shocked, I can't believe it," Jorko said afterward. Fifteen months of underperformance ended with a benching; two days later, the replacement's first match was a statement win over one of the best teams alive.

🔥 Danil "donk" Kryshkovets posted a career-high 2.84 rating on a map that started with him clutching a 1v3. Spirit needed a decider to get past 100 Thieves in the BLAST Bounty Round of 16, and the 19-year-old made sure it wasn't close. After Spirit and 100 Thieves split Anubis and Mirage, donk opened the Dust2 decider with a 1v3, raced to 16-4 by round seven, and closed the map 20-5 in a 13-0 shutout. It was the best-rated map of his HLTV career. 

100 Thieves had looked dangerous getting there, having already eliminated Falcons and broken Spirit's own eight-map Mirage win streak behind William "sirah" Kjærsgaard's A-site play, but there was no answering donk on his best map. Spirit's magixx explained why lower-ranked teams keep pushing the giants this event: "When you're playing T1, everyone plays the same CS. Against Top 40 or lower, they have their own fresh ideas." Spirit's reward is a spot in Malta as the tournament's only remaining top ten team.

⚽ A seven-a-side football club tied to Gerard Piqué's Kings League just knocked out a top-three Counter-Strike team. Brazilian org Sharks rebranded as DENDELE this month after partnering with the Kings League franchise of the same name, and their first match under the new banner was a 2-1 upset of FURIA, the world's No. 3 team, in BLAST Bounty's Round of 32. Máximo "maxxkor" Cortina led the win with a 1.27 rating across three maps, closing out a grueling Cache overtime after FURIA had leveled the series on Mirage. 

DENDELE's run ended in the very next round, falling 2-1 to FaZe despite a 13-2 Nuke beatdown working against them and a fightback on Mirage and Cache; a match scheduled roughly 12 hours after their previous one didn't help. The rebrand itself split the fanbase, with some fans mocking the new logo and others calling the football crossover smart business. Either way, DENDELE leaves BLAST Bounty having beaten a Major finalist under a name that didn't exist two weeks ago.

✂️ Luken and NEKIZ are both free agents, and they're saying the quiet part out loud. Gaimin Gladiators cut loose Luca "Luken" Nadotti and Gabriel "NEKIZ" Schenato this week, one month after benching its CS2 roster following a strategic review that pointed straight at Valve's Major sticker changes. Luken confirmed it himself: "Following the changes made by Valve regarding the stickers, the organization understood that the project was no longer profitable." 

It's the same system HLTV reported had left one Stage 2 Cologne team with just $120,000 in sticker sales, a fraction of the roughly $600,000 Contender capsules generated at Budapest a year earlier. Only HEN1 remains attached to the org following the cuts. Gaimin Gladiators becomes the clearest name-and-face casualty yet of Valve's sticker overhaul, and the CS scene is now watching which org makes the same call next.

📈 The MongolZ debuted two new faces and made Malta anyway. Zolbayar "tikuak" Chimedtseren and Ireedui "DarkMeister" Dugarsuren joined the Mongolian roster this month, and their first real test came against Wildcard in the Bounty Round of 16. The MongolZ swept 2-0, with tikuak posting a 1.33 rating and 910 topping the box score at 97 ADR. Consistency, not chaos, got them to Malta. (Buzz Score: 58/100)

🥊 3DMAX punched their Malta ticket the hard way, needing every map against FUT. Kévin "misutaaa" Rabier put up 45 kills, 90 ADR, and a 1.37 rating across the series, while Turkish addition Yasin "xfl0ud" Koç kept FUT competitive to the final whistle. 3DMAX becomes the tournament's No. 34-ranked Cinderella story. (Buzz Score: 55/100)

🛒 Betclic just bought an entire roster to chase a Stockholm bracket. The French org signed KOLESIE's Mateusz "ex1st" Witman, Konrad "Qlocuu" Klocek, and Sebastian "fr3nd" Kuśmierz, plus head coach Grzegorz "SZPERO" Dziamałek, inheriting the outfit's world No. 76 ranking in the process. The new-look side debuts at Stake Pulse Beat I in Stockholm on July 31, grouped with Liquid, The Last Resort, and atputies. (Buzz Score: 51/100)

🚫 Subtop De France got banned from the CCT circuit. A player says it's worse than that. GRID, the company behind CCT, banned the French team and forfeited their ongoing Europe 6 matches after an "integrity assessment" ruled them "a material risk to competitive integrity." GRID gave no further public details. Team member NAGU went further on X, claiming the ban actually covers every GRID-organized competition for 18 months and that no explanation was given to the players, publicly or privately. GRID has not responded to that broader claim. (Buzz Score: 47/100)

⌨️ mezii's keybinds finally have an origin story, and it involves his dad. A TLDR deep-dive traced the BIG rifler's famously unconventional key layout back to whoever first put a mouse and keyboard in front of him. The piece sits behind a subscriber gate, so the full account isn't public, but the headline alone had CS Twitter asking questions about the man behind "The Stuart and the King." (Buzz Score: 41/100)

donk's career-high HLTV rating, posted on the Dust2 decider that eliminated 100 Thieves.

What one Stage 2 team reportedly earned from Cologne Major sticker sales, down from the roughly $600,000 Contender capsules generated at Budapest a year earlier.

The clean-sweep scoreline Spirit dealt 100 Thieves on Dust2 to seal their spot in the Malta LAN Finals.

👉 July 30–August 2: BLAST Bounty Season 2 LAN Finals, Malta. Eight teams, one of them (Spirit) ranked inside the world's top ten. MOUZ, at No. 11, is the next-best seed. With Falcons, Vitality and FURIA already gone, this is the most wide-open Bounty finals yet, and the $1.15 million prize pool is up for grabs

👉 July 31–August 5: Stake Pulse Beat I, Stockholm. Betclic's new KOLESIE-core lineup makes its debut, grouped with Liquid, The Last Resort and atputies. First real look at whether the roster transfer was worth it.

👉 Liquid's JT era gets its second test. The Vitality upset was a statement, but Liquid's next opponents will tell us whether the new-look roster is for real or just caught a No. 2 seed cold.

👉 Watching whether Gaimin Gladiators has any CS2 presence left. With Luken and NEKIZ gone and only HEN1 still attached, the next update on this org may be its last.

See you Friday for CS BUZZ RETRO, revisits the moments that made CS what it is.

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