Esports|Counter-Strike 2|Natus Vincere — The 13-3 Major Decider at Royal Arena

On March 31, 2024, Natus Vincere and FaZe Clan met inside Royal Arena in Copenhagen for the Grand Final of PGL Major Copenhagen 2024. PGL organized the live LAN, and Valve sanctioned it as Counter-Strike 2’s first Major Championship; the arena hosted the single-elimination playoffs from March 28 through the final Sunday. NAVI fielded Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen, Mihai “iM” Ivan, Valeriy “b1t” Vakhovskiy, Justinas “jL” Lekavicius, and Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov, coached by Andrij “B1ad3” Ghorodenskyj. FaZe answered with Finn “karrigan” Andersen, Håvard “rain” Nygaard, Robin “ropz” Kool, Helvijs “broky” Saukants, and David “frozen” Čerňanský, with Filip “NEO” Kubski coaching. Counter-Strike 2 is a five-versus-five tactical shooter in which one side attacks bomb sites and the other defends them, switching roles after twelve rounds. A map normally goes to the first team to win thirteen rounds, so every map—not total eliminations—counted as one unit in this best-of-three final. The match ran on Counter-Strike 2 for Windows PCs in the public Steam release window of build 13829089, dated March 23; SteamDB records it as the last public depot build before the April 3 post-Major update. This was CS2, not Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, whose final Valve Major had been played in Paris in 2023. FaZe selected Ancient, but NAVI won it 13–9. NAVI then selected Mirage and lost 2–13, leaving Inferno as the decisive third map rather than carrying any round margin forward from the first two. On Inferno, NAVI led 9–3 after the opening half and won the first four rounds after the side switch, closing the map 13–3 and the series 2–1. The result made Natus Vincere the inaugural CS2 Major champion and earned the team the event’s $500,000 first prize. Valve’s official championship record identifies NAVI as the first CS2 Major champion and names the five-player lineup: https://steamcommunity.com/games/CSGO/announcements/detail/4185606994270578199 . NAVI’s event report confirms the date, opponent, maps, result, and prize: https://navi.gg/en/publications/navi-pgl-major-copenhagen-champions . HLTV independently records the LAN best-of-three and round scores: https://www.hltv.org/matches/2370727/faze-vs-natus-vincere-pgl-cs2-major-copenhagen-2024 . The revision record is https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/13829089/ , and Royal Arena’s official address is https://www.royalarena.dk/en/om . Cover image: “Royal Arena (Copenhagen) 01.jpg,” photographed September 1, 2020, by Jens Cederskjold; CC BY-SA 2.0. Source and license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Arena_(Copenhagen)_01.jpg