July 31, 2026
Edited by Stoyan Ovcharov and Karl Mikael Cakste

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 RETRO (On Fridays) revisits the moments that made CS what it is. CS BUZZ NOW (On Tuesdays) lists what the community's talking about right now. Scroll down, subscribe, share your ideas and win an ASTRO A50 X Lightspeed headsets 🎧.

FaZe Clan outlasted Natus Vincere 3-2 in the IEM Cologne 2022 grand final, a five-map, nearly seven-hour war that peaked at 1.25 million viewers and became the most-watched non-Major match in CS history. Four years ago this July, LANXESS Arena hosted the loudest deciding round Cologne had seen.

Nuke, map five, decider. Natus Vincere reinforce ramp and force a positive trade, but FaZe grind through the lower defense anyway. Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken wins a superb 1v2 to get FaZe over the line, and the Cathedral roars as the score ticks to 13-11.

NAVI answer. FaZe stumble on an upper hit as NAVI's defense holds firm, shutting down Helvijs "broky" Saukants's attempt to salvage the post-plant. FaZe force a Tec-9 buy the next round and catch Denis "electroNic" Sharipov out of position, but the retake turns fully frantic, kills traded back and forth, and Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy comes out the other side to tie it at 13-13. FaZe squander a 5v3 man advantage and fall behind 13-14, then claw back to 14-14 on a clean upper hit that breaks NAVI's economy.

A tech pause freezes the arena mid-breath. Nobody in LANXESS Arena sits down.

When the server comes back, NAVI's buy falls apart. Twistzz barrels off the roof of mini for an unanswered double kill, putting FaZe up 15-14. The next NAVI buy is just as bad, FaZe's upper hit goes unanswered, and Cologne 2022 belongs to FaZe Clan, 16-14. Twistzz closes the map with 25 kills and a match-high 1.40 rating. Håvard "rain" Nygaard isn't far behind at 23 kills and a 1.20 rating. Finn "karrigan" Andersen, FaZe's in-game leader, grabs the mic on stage before the trophy is even in his hands.

"We're going to figure out how we're going to win the last [notch for the Intel] Grand Slam," karrigan tells the crowd. "We're going to do everything, and that's our main goal for the next season, to finish off the work that we did this season."

Across the server, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev sits with a losing scoreline and a tournament MVP trophy anyway. FaZe Clan had just won the biggest non-Major match Counter-Strike had ever staged.

IEM Cologne returned to LANXESS Arena in July 2022 after nearly three years away, and the venue sold out for a fifth consecutive time. Twenty-four teams had opened the event on July 5, whittled down through a play-in and group stage before six survivors met on the live stage for the playoffs. Astralis and MOUZ opened the arena's return. Natus Vincere, the reigning 2021 Cologne champions, beat Astralis in the first semifinal. FaZe Clan beat Movistar Riders in the second, setting up the final anyone with a calendar had circled.

FaZe arrived with something extra riding on the series. They had already won IEM Katowice 2022 and the CS:GO Major in Antwerp that same year, two legs of the Intel Grand Slam, a bonus prize pool worth $1 million to any team that could string together enough S-tier wins. Cologne marked their third trophy in the Intel Grand Slam race. Win it, and FaZe would become the first team ever to take a Katowice title, a Major, and a Cologne trophy inside a single calendar year.

NAVI carried their own weight into the match. With s1mple playing at an MVP level all tournament and a roster built to grind best-of-fives, they had spent the year as the team most likely to end FaZe's run. A trophy defense was on the line, too.

The total prize pool was $1 million, with $400,000 going to the winner, but by July 2022, money was rarely why anyone tuned in. People tuned in because two of the best rosters CS had assembled that year were about to settle it on Cologne's stage, in front of 35,000 fans across the event, and however many more were watching from home.

s1mple walked away from Cologne 2022 with his 21st career MVP medal and a losing scoreline. It remains one of the clearest reminders in CS history that individual dominance and team silverware are separate contests. The best player on the server does not automatically play for the winning side.

FaZe's pursuit of the Intel Grand Slam turned Cologne into more than a trophy defense. With two Intel Grand Slam wins already banked (Katowice and ESL Pro League S15), every round carried the weight of a $1 million side quest. It showed how a meta-incentive layered on top of a tournament can raise the stakes of a single series beyond what the trophy alone would provide.

At 1.25 million peak viewers, Cologne 2022 became the most-watched non-Major match CS had ever recorded, at the time the fifth most-watched match in the game's history, including Majors. It proved ESL's flagship event could draw a Major-sized crowd on its own name, a data point that reshaped how the entire non-Major calendar got valued afterwards.

That's the night the Cathedral proved a trophy doesn't need a Valve logo on it to matter.

See you Tuesday — Buzzing.

Stoyan Ovcharov, Karl Mikael Cakste & The CS Buzz Team

If you have feedback on how we can improve CS BUZZ, email us at [email protected]. We read everything.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up now to get CS BUZZ in your inbox.