Starladder Budapest Major: The Best Event of 2025

There are no other events in Counter-Strike like the official Majors. Esports teams should earn their invites in the season-long competitions. The tournament format is extended so that even obscure underdogs have a chance to shine on the biggest stage. Winning a Major? It’s a dream for any team and any player!

CS2 StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 is especially great. It concludes an extremely competitive season, and no team comes to the tournament with a big advantage.

Everything you need to know ahead of the event is here.

CS2 Major 2025 in Budapest to Complete a Brilliant Season

All the CS2 Majors are special! To qualify for these tournaments, esports teams accumulate ranking points throughout the season. The best players advance to the latest Swiss Stage 3. Even to get into the starting Major Stage 1 is quite an achievement for low- and mid-tier organizations.

The competition throughout the season makes the Major Budapest 2025 unique.

• In the first half of 2025, one team strongly dominated the CS2 esports scene: Team Vitality. These players won every tournament they participated in, including the Austin Major.
• The second half of 2025, which leads us to the Budapest Major, features the downfall of Vitality—not too drastic, though, just to the top 2 or top 4 level. A few other teams won big tournaments: The MongolZ, FURIA, G2, and others.

With ups and downs among the top teams, the Budapest Major is truly the best event in the CS2 esports calendar of 2025.

Four Stages of StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 explained

The tournament format for CS2 Budapest Major 2025 includes four stages.

• Stage 1, from 24 to 27 Nov: The Swiss format for the 16 lowest-seeded teams. Three wins in five rounds are needed to advance.
• Stage 2, from 29 Nov to 2 Dec: Eight teams with higher regional standings join the tournament. The matches are under the Swiss System format again.
• Stage 3, from 4 to 7 Dec: The eight best teams in the world start from this Swiss stage. The top 8 advance to the final brackets.
• Playoffs from 11 Dec to 14 Dec: Single-elimination brackets. This stage is the main part of StarLadder Budapest Major 2025.

The CS2 Major remains interesting throughout this entire period. However, the focus shifts during the stages. First, the community discovers new names and wonders who among these underdogs can make it to Stage 2 at least. Then, we have strong mid-tier players and top teams with shaky performances.

The final Swiss stage brings the Counter-Strike powerhouses to the spotlight. With the best-of-one matches in the initial rounds, we can even witness spectacular upsets. As for the Playoffs, nothing can beat the intensity of a Major’s final brackets!

The Budapest Major Favorites and Underdogs

The competitive schedule is really tight this year. We could witness a few big tournaments right before the StarLadder Major. Their results can hint at the biggest favorites for the win in Budapest.

FURIA is on the rise, and this team really can win the Major. With the addition of YEKINDAR and molodoy to the roster, FURIA has its best season ever. The team has won a few tournaments, including Intel Extreme Masters Chengdu 2025.

Team Vitality is in shaky form right now. Still, they won ESL Pro League Season 22. It won’t be surprising to see Vitality unleashing their true power for the back-to-back Major win.

Team Falcons is still inconsistent, considering the individual level of these star players. Still, Falcons performed great at EPL Season 22 and BLAST Rivals 2025, right before the Budapest Major.

MOUZ players are always a threat in top-level Counter-Strike. Still, they lack one extra step to win a big tournament. Can this happen at the Major in Budapest?

The MongolZ, NAVI, G2, and Team Spirit have been experiencing big issues with tournament consistency. A miracle can still happen for them to be back on top competitive form for the Major.

Among the most interesting underdogs, we can name the following few.

• B8 players have surprised the community with their results at a few big tournaments. They are unlikely to win, but the team is interesting to follow.
• Legacy won CS Asia Championships 2025 and may strike again in Budapest.
• 3DMAX can upset big opponents. The team has been looking good at big CS2 stages recently.
• Aurora Gaming won PGL Masters Bucharest 2025 and was in the grand final of the Esports World Cup.
• paiN Gaming delivers explosive Counter-Strike, and was in the top 4 at the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025.

Community Activities during the CS2 StarLadder Major

In addition to watching the matches on the official Twitch channel of StarLadder, you can join the Pick’em Challenge for the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025.

Valve has started the traditional prediction contest within the game. You can purchase a Viewer Pass and join the party!

• Make correct predictions for the Swiss rounds and upgrade your Event Coin.
• Receive Souvenir Tokens for the Coin upgrades and spend them on Souvenir Packages.

With Souvenir Packages in your inventory, you can hope for good drops: CS2 Souvenir skins are usually quite valuable.

To boost the price of your Budapest Major 2025 drops, you can add special tournament stickers to the Souvenir skins. The sticker packages are already available.

Combinations of exclusive stickers connected to the tournament winners and unique Souvenir skins are always in demand among traders and collectors.

It’s always fun to join conversations around CS2 Majors on social media. Use relevant hashtags to let people find your thoughts, such as #BudapestMajor or #CS2Major. Share your predictions or watch other picks with #PickEms. People love joking about their mistakes with #PickEmFail.

In addition to the main streams, it may be fun to join watch-party streams of popular content creators, such as olofmeister and Stewie2K. While co-streaming, these former pros do deep match analytics. On Twitch, you can find clips of the best moments for each tournament day.

In general, CS2 Majors cause waves of increased interest in the game, which is reflected in the number of players and viewership peaks on streaming platforms. Don’t hesitate to follow these cool trends in the Counter-Strike community!

Trade on the go - install the mobile app of DMarket from Google Play or App Store. Never miss great prices and unique skins. The best CS2, Dota 2, Rust and TF2 marketplace is always at hand!

For more info on CS2 and skins trading, stay tuned to DMarket Blog and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.