Counter-Strike Major sticker money: how it reaches teams and players

Ask what a Counter-Strike team earns at a Major and the first answer is the prize pool. For the IEM Cologne Major, which opened on June 2, 2026, that is US$1,250,000 for 32 teams, according to the organizer, ESL. It is only one of the two sums at stake. The other comes from fans, through the digital stickers and other items that Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike 2, sells around each of its Majors.

How that second sum is divided has just changed. For Cologne, Valve dropped the capsules that used to carry Major stickers and introduced a shop with prices set by demand, together with a formula for the share of revenue that goes to the teams. HLTV, the Counter-Strike news site, reported the figures on May 22.

This guide follows the money from the fan's purchase to the team and its players. It explains what Major items are, how the capsule system shared revenue, what one player contract of that era said, how the new shop works, the formula for teams before and after the tournament, where players stand under it, and what the calendar of the Cologne Major means for the payments. It covers stickers only: no percentage has been published for the Viewer Pass or for Souvenir weapons.

HLTV, May 22, 2026, reporting the formula Valve released with the IEM Cologne Major items.

Two incomes at every Major

A Major is a Counter-Strike tournament for which Valve releases items featuring the teams and players taking part. The Cologne edition is the 24th Major in the game's history and the first of 2026, according to ESL's announcement of August 3, 2025.

The first income is the prize pool. ESL set it at US$1,250,000 for the Cologne Major, to be shared by the teams that compete for it.

The second income is the sale of Major items. Valve's post on Steam announcing the Cologne items, dated May 21, 2026, describes them as tournament items featuring teams and player autographs, available for purchase. The items carry the teams' logos and the autographs of their players.

The item side can be far larger. For the Paris Major, HLTV reported a record US$110 million from the sale of digital items.

What a Major item is

Four things are tied to a Major's sales. Stickers carry a team's logo or a player's autograph, and some come in gold versions, which HLTV's report mentions for Souvenirs.

Souvenir weapons are the second kind. Each is tied to a specific match of the Major and to the gold stickers of a team and a player chosen for it.

The Viewer Pass is the third. It was released at the same time as the Cologne stickers, HLTV reported; the report gives neither its price nor its content.

The fourth is the unit fans now pay with in the Major Shop, which HLTV calls tokens, in quotation marks. The report does not say how tokens are obtained or what one costs.

The formula HLTV reported concerns the first kind only. Every percentage in this guide is a share of sticker revenue.

The capsule years

Until Cologne, stickers were sold inside capsules. A capsule was a sealed digital pack: fans had to unbox capsules to get the stickers inside, HLTV recalls, without choosing which. A Major had several capsules; HLTV names one of the Paris capsules, Challengers.

The amounts that reached teams under that system were large. In an investigation published on April 28, 2026, HLTV reported that each team in the Paris Major capsule called Challengers received US$2.6 million from digital items, and that team stickers made up about 56% of that sum.

The comparison sets the scale. A single team in one capsule of one Major received about twice the prize pool that the whole field of 32 teams shares in Cologne.

How players were paid under capsules

The money from capsules was paid to organizations. What reached the players was a matter between each organization and its players, set in their contracts.

HLTV's April investigation quoted one such contract. It gave each of the five players 10% of what it called the received revenue from the sale of team items, 50% in total for the roster. The clause also showed where disputes could arise. As HLTV described it, the wording appeared to cover only the organization's own team items, not Souvenirs or viewer passes, while the players had understood that they were entitled to a share of all the Major proceeds. Players said the narrower reading meant each of them would have missed out on more than US$100,000.

Two points follow from that clause. The players' share was set by contract, organization by organization, rather than by Valve. And it depended on definitions: which items counted, and whether it was calculated on what the organization actually received.

The same investigation showed how such terms could be renegotiated. According to HLTV, the organization later offered players a guaranteed 5% share each of the total received from all items if the roster stayed unchanged past July, and pledged in a letter a 5% share of non-team sticker sales from the Rio and Paris Majors, and the same share for future Majors, on top of the 10% share of team stickers. Its chief executive told HLTV that sticker proceeds were paid to each player individually, in line with industry standards, and that all claims had been settled in full.

HLTV's podcast of May 31, 2026, with Graham "messioso" Pitt, head of Counter-Strike operations at 100 Thieves, came back to the point. Pre-existing contracts already give players a share of the total sticker pool, the write-up said, and some organizations and players are already in conflict over how the revenue should be divided.

The Cologne shop

For Cologne, the capsule is gone. Valve's post describes the new Major Shop in one line: buyers can get any sticker they want, at prices set by demand.

HLTV's report gives the mechanism. A fan buys an individual sticker and pays in tokens. The price of each sticker follows relative demand and rises as more people buy it, so the stickers of different teams, and the same sticker on different days, do not cost the same.

Because a price can also fall, the shop 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 the whole difference, in tokens.

Souvenirs are made to order. A fan starts from a weapon already in their inventory and chooses a specific player and a specific match. The price depends on the value of the gold player and team stickers selected and on the rarity of the weapon used. HLTV described the changes to the way stickers are bought as significant.

Half the revenue, three shares

The formula fits in the three numbers at the top of this guide. HLTV reports that 50% of sticker revenue is shared. Of it, 5% goes to the tournament organizer and 45% to the teams. The two shares add up to the 50%; the other half of sticker revenue is not part of the distribution.

For the Cologne Major, the organizer is ESL, which announced and runs the event. Its 5% is a share of the sticker revenue of the event it organizes, separate from the prize pool it pays out.

The 45% is the part that concerns teams, and it is not divided evenly. How much each team receives depends on two things in turn: its ranking until the tournament ends, then its result.

The arithmetic gives a reference point. If the 45% were split evenly between the 32 teams, each would receive about 1.41% of sticker revenue. The published scale moves away from that line in both directions.

Two more comparisons follow from the same numbers. The organizer's 5% is larger than the line of the top-ranked team, 2.85%, by a factor of about 1.75. And once the top line and the two bottom lines are taken out, 4.29% in all, the 29 teams in between share the remaining 40.71% of sticker revenue, an average of about 1.40% each.

A worked example turns the percentages into money. Take an illustrative US$1 million of sticker revenue, a round figure chosen for the arithmetic and not a sales number. Half of it, US$500,000, enters the distribution: US$50,000 for the organizer and US$450,000 for the teams. Within that, the top-ranked team's line is US$28,500 and the line of each of the two bottom teams US$7,200.

By ranking until the final

Before and during the tournament, the 45% is allocated according to the Valve Regional Standings, or VRS, the ranking Valve computes and uses to invite teams to its Majors. ESL's announcement states that the 32 Cologne teams were invited on the VRS, with the first update of April 2026 deciding the list.

HLTV describes the standings as updated monthly. It reported the April update on April 6, 2026 and described the ranking used for the Cologne invitations as set from that day. Vitality, a European team, stood first with 2,063 points, ahead of Natus Vincere with 1,903. The Major places are allocated across three regions: Europe, the Americas and Asia.

The ranking that counts for the money is a team's VRS placing, HLTV writes. The report does not say which monthly update is used while the items are on sale.

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 lines in between are not in the report.

Against the even split of about 1.41%, the top line is roughly twice as large and the bottom line about half as large. Between the first and the last team of the scale, the ratio is close to four to one.

By result after the final

The second phase begins when the tournament ends. From then on, HLTV reports, all further sticker revenue is allocated by placing at the Major rather than by VRS.

The structure of the event decides what placing means. The 32 teams do not all start at the same point: the places in each stage were allocated region by region with the April standings, and a team that enters later is already sure of a better placing than the teams eliminated before it arrives.

The format adds weight to each round. In Stages 1 and 2, matches are played over a single map except those that send a team through or out, HLTV reported on May 21; Stage 3 is played entirely in best-of-three series, won by the first team to take two maps. The first day, June 2, brought eight Stage 1 matches, among them BIG against Liquid and GamerLegion against NRG.

The rosters HLTV published on April 22 name the teams on each line. Stage 3 opens with Vitality, Natus Vincere, Falcons, FURIA, Aurora, MOUZ, The MongolZ and PARIVISION. Stage 2 brings in Monte, 9z, paiN, Legacy, Spirit, Astralis, G2 and FUT. The 16 teams of Stage 1 include TYLOO, Lynn Vision, FlyQuest, MIBR, HEROIC, SINNERS, B8 and BETBOOM.

The scale that applies by placing has not been published in HLTV's report. What the switch does is clear from the rule itself: on the stickers sold after the final, a team's share follows how far it went at the Major, no longer where it stood in the standings.

Where the players stand

The formula HLTV reported on May 22 stops at the team. It gives no percentage for players, and the report does not say how the money that reaches a team is divided between the organization and its five players.

HLTV's podcast of May 31, hosted by Nohte and Harry "NER0" Richards with messioso as guest, reviewed estimated payouts from previous Majors for teams and players, and described the difference the new system makes for players. Where the old contracts gave players a share set with their organization, the new system gives players a direct cut of the total, according to the write-up. It added that the system rewards performance, lowers payouts for lower-ranked organizations, and gives those organizations' players a bigger share.

That leaves two layers in a player's sticker income. The first is the team's line, which the published formula sets by ranking and then by result. The second is the player's part of that line, which the old system left to the contract with the organization, as in the example HLTV quoted, and which the new system addresses directly, by the podcast's account.

The calendar behind the payments

The dates of the Cologne Major now carry a financial meaning as well as a sporting one.

The items went on sale on May 21, according to Valve's post, and HLTV reported the release the following day. From then until the end of the tournament, every sticker sold is shared by ranking. That first phase covers about a month of sales: the twelve days between the release and the opening matches, then the 20 days of the event itself, from June 2 to the grand final on June 21. Throughout that period, the line a team stands on follows its VRS placing.

The tournament opened on June 2 in Cologne. Sixteen teams play Stage 1, eight more join in Stage 2 and the last eight in Stage 3, before the eight best teams meet in the playoffs at the LANXESS arena from June 18 to 21. ESL scheduled the quarterfinals on June 18 and 19, the semifinals on June 20 and the grand final on June 21, and said it expected more than 50,000 fans from more than 70 countries.

After June 21, the placing takes over for every further sale: from then on, the result in Cologne, not the April ranking, decides each team's share.

What the formula leaves open

The percentages are fixed; the amount they apply to is not. Under the Cologne system, revenue depends on how many stickers fans buy, at prices that move with each purchase, and no revenue figure for the Cologne items has been published.

Several elements of the system are also outside the published formula. HLTV's May 22 report gives the two ends of the ranking scale but not the lines between them, gives no scale by Major placing, and sets no percentage for the Viewer Pass or Souvenir weapons. Valve's post sets out the shop and its prices set by demand.

The comparison with the capsule years therefore stops at the method: a figure exists for one Paris capsule, and none yet for the Cologne shop.

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