Valve drops capsules for the Cologne Major and sets how teams are paid

The second income of a Counter-Strike Major has new rules. Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike 2, has released the stickers and the Viewer Pass of the IEM Cologne Major 2026, and the capsules that carried those stickers at earlier Majors are gone. HLTV reported the release on May 22, 2026; Valve's own post on Steam is dated May 21 and says that tournament items featuring teams and player autographs are now available to purchase.

Two things change at once. For the fan, a sticker is no longer something found by opening a capsule: any sticker can be bought directly, in a store Valve calls the Major Shop, at a price that moves with demand. For the teams, HLTV sets out a formula: 50% of sticker revenue is shared, a slice of it goes to the tournament organizer, and the rest is divided according to a team's ranking, then according to its result once the Major is over.

HLTV describes the changes as significant compared with the usual structure of a Major. The tournament itself starts on June 2 in Cologne, less than two weeks after the items went on sale.

Any sticker, bought directly

A Major sticker is a digital item carrying a team's logo or a player's autograph. Until now, HLTV recalls, fans had to unbox capsules to get them: the purchase was a sealed pack, and the sticker came out of it.

For Cologne, the capsule disappears. Fans buy individual stickers, and they pay with a unit HLTV puts in quotation marks, tokens. The report does not say how tokens are obtained or what one costs.

The price of a sticker is not fixed. It follows relative demand, HLTV writes, and rises as more people buy that sticker. Valve's post illustrates the mechanism with one item, a holographic FURIA logo. A popular team's sticker can therefore cost more tokens than another team's sticker of the same kind, and the same sticker can cost more on one day than on another.

Because prices can also fall, the system includes a protection for buyers. If the price of a sticker drops by more than 25 tokens within 24 hours of a purchase, the buyer is refunded, in tokens, the whole difference. The rule as HLTV reports it covers only a drop of more than 25 tokens, and only inside that first day.

Souvenirs are made to order

The second kind of item tied to a Major, the Souvenir weapon, changes as well: it is now made to order.

HLTV describes the new process. A fan starts from a weapon already in their inventory, then selects a specific player and a specific match. The price of the Souvenir depends on two things: the value of the gold player and team stickers chosen, and the rarity of the weapon used.

The link with the sticker shop is direct. Since the stickers have moving prices, a Souvenir built on the gold stickers of a team in demand costs more than one built on the stickers of a team few people are buying.

The Viewer Pass, the third item, was released at the same time. HLTV's report states that it is out and gives neither its price nor what it contains.

Half of the revenue is shared

The part of the announcement that concerns teams fits in three numbers: 50, 5 and 45.

The organizer's 5% and the teams' 45% add up to the 50% that is shared. The other half of sticker revenue is not part of the distribution.

The figures concern stickers. HLTV's report gives no percentage for the Viewer Pass or for Souvenir weapons, and it does not say how the money that reaches a team is divided between the organization and its five players.

By ranking first, by result afterwards

The 45% is not divided evenly. Before and during the tournament it is allocated according to the Valve Regional Standings, the ranking Valve computes from results and uses to invite teams to its Majors.

HLTV gives the two ends of the scale. The top-ranked team receives 2.85% of sticker revenue. Each of the bottom two teams receives 0.72%. The intermediate lines are not in the report.

Those two numbers can be placed against a simple reference. ESL's announcement of the event counts 32 teams. If the 45% were divided evenly between 32 teams, each would get about 1.41%. The top-ranked team's line is roughly twice that, and the line of the bottom two is about half of it. Between the first and the last of the scale, the ratio is close to four to one.

A worked example, with an invented round figure, shows the orders of magnitude. Suppose stickers bring in US$10 million. Under the percentages HLTV reports, US$5 million is shared: US$500,000 for the organizer and US$4.5 million for the teams. The top-ranked team's line is US$285,000 and that of each of the bottom two teams is US$72,000. The US$10 million is an assumption made for the example, not a sales figure: no revenue number has been published for the Cologne items.

The second phase starts when the tournament ends. After the Major concludes, HLTV reports, all further sticker revenue is allocated by placing at the Major and no longer by ranking. The switch therefore concerns the stickers sold once the tournament is over. On those sales, a team that entered the event near the bottom of the standings and went far sits on a better line than the one it started with, and a highly ranked team that went out early on a worse one.

What a capsule was worth

The scale of the money involved is known from the capsule era. In an investigation published on April 28, 2026, HLTV wrote that the Paris Major had generated a record US$110 million from the sale of digital items, and that each team in the capsule named Challengers had received US$2.6 million. Team stickers accounted for approximately 56% of the US$2.6 million each of those teams received, the same article said.

Those figures explain why the formula matters to a club's budget. The prize pool of the Cologne Major is US$1,250,000 for the whole field, according to ESL. By HLTV's figures, a single team in the Paris Challengers capsule received about twice that amount from items alone.

The same investigation gives one example of how that money reached players under the old system. It quoted one player contract that gave each player 10%, 50% for the five together, of the revenue an organization received from the sale of team items, and described a disagreement inside that organization over what the clause covered. For Cologne, the published formula stops at the team.

The tournament behind the items

The IEM Cologne Major is the first Counter-Strike Major of 2026. ESL announced it on August 3, 2025: June 2 to 21 in Cologne, Germany, 32 teams, a prize pool of US$1,250,000, and playoffs for the last eight teams at the LANXESS arena from June 18 to 21, with the grand final on June 21. The organizer said it expected more than 50,000 fans from more than 70 countries, for the first Major in the city in a decade.

The 32 teams are invited through the Valve Regional Standings. ESL said the first update of April 2026 would settle the list, and HLTV reported that update on April 6. The field is spread over three stages before the playoffs: 16 teams begin in Stage 1, eight more enter in Stage 2 and the last eight in Stage 3, according to the rosters ESL published on April 22.

The opening matches are already known. HLTV published the eight Stage 1 pairings on May 21, all scheduled for June 2, among them BIG against Liquid, HEROIC against Sharks and B8 against TYLOO. In Stages 1 and 2, matches are played as a single map except those that send a team through or out, the same report said, while Stage 3 is played entirely in best-of-three series, won by the first team to take two maps.

Two dates that matter for the money

The calendar of the Major now carries a financial meaning as well as a sporting one.

The first date is June 2, the opening day. From the release of the items until the tournament is over, the ranking decides each team's line: 2.85% of sticker revenue at the top of the standings, 0.72% for each of the two teams at the bottom.

The second date is June 21, the day of the grand final. Once the Major has concluded, the placing takes over from the ranking for all further sticker revenue. For a team low in the standings, the tournament is therefore also a chance to leave the lower lines of the scale. For a team high in them, an early exit carries a cost beyond the prize money.

What the new system will bring in is the open question. The half that is shared is a fixed percentage; the amount it applies to depends on how many stickers are bought, at prices that now change with every purchase.

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