ENCE bench their entire CS2 roster and turn back to Finnish talent

ENCE, the Finnish organization that reached a Counter-Strike Major final in 2019, moved its whole Counter-Strike 2 lineup to the bench on Wednesday, March 11, 2026. In a statement published on its own site under the title "The next chapter of ENCE", the club said the main roster and its coaching staff were now available for transfer discussions, and that the team would be rebuilt with Finnish players at its core.

HLTV, the reference news and statistics site for Counter-Strike, reported the decision the same evening and listed the people concerned: five players from four countries and a German head coach. Only one of the five is Finnish, and he is leaving the starting lineup too, by his own choice.

The move is a benching, not a set of releases. Every player stays under contract with ENCE until another team comes for him, and nobody has been signed in their place. For the moment, ENCE has no active main team in the game that made its name.

HLTV report of March 11, 2026; ranking dated March 9, 2026.

What ENCE announced on March 11

The statement is addressed to the club's community and carries no signature. It says the decision followed a strategic review carried out with the company's leadership and its majority shareholders, and that the outcome is to refocus ENCE on its home country.

The reasoning is given in plain terms. ENCE writes that it has invested heavily over the past years in international competition and in lineups meant to reach the highest level of Counter-Strike. Then comes the sentence that explains the change of course: "Unfortunately, in the current esports ecosystem, this has become increasingly difficult for organizations like ours."

From there the club describes a reset with a long-term view. The stated aim is to rebuild a Counter-Strike team around Finnish talent and to bring through the next generation of Finnish players. The statement names no future player, no coach and no date for a new lineup. It says only that more details on the Counter-Strike plans and on the organization's direction will be shared in the near future.

The review reaches beyond the team. ENCE adds that parts of the organization are being restructured and that some staff roles will be affected, without saying how many.

The five players and the coach on the bench

The lineup that leaves the server was an international one. Its members are sdy, a 28-year-old Ukrainian; podi, a 21-year-old Finn who plays the AWP, the game's sniper rifle and a specialist role in every team; Neityu, a 20-year-old Frenchman; and two 22-year-old Poles, F1KU and kRaSnaL. The head coach, enkay J, is German.

HLTV publishes a rating for professional players, a single figure for individual performance over the maps played. The site printed the rating of each benched player over the previous three months next to the news, which gives a picture of the roster as it stood when it was stopped.

All five sat above 1.00 over the period, and the gap between the highest and the lowest figure is 0.10. The table shows a group of players of similar individual level rather than a team carried by one name. What it does not show is results, and that is where the club's own account of the past year becomes useful.

A lineup that was two months old

The roster benched on March 11 had been presented by ENCE on January 6, 2026, a little over two months earlier. That announcement brought in the two Polish players. F1KU, who had played for AGO, OG and Wildcard, was described by the club as a fit for the anchor and lurker roles, the players who hold one part of the map or work alone behind the opponent. kRaSnaL, a former teammate of sdy at Monte and of F1KU at AGO, arrived as the entry fragger, the player who goes first into a contested area.

They replaced myltsi and rigoN, with whom ENCE had already announced it was parting ways. The staff around the five was made up of enkay J as head coach and an analyst, Fisic0.

In that January text ENCE was open about where it stood. It described the 2025 season as a mix of highs and lows, said the team had struggled to qualify for tier-one LAN events, the top level of tournaments played in a venue rather than online, and noted that it had missed the Major. Its general manager, Willkey, called 2025 a tough year and said the goal was to get back to the Majors and to the tier-one LAN circuit. The new five started the year with a training camp at ENCE HomeBase and made their debut in BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 1, which began on January 13.

Sixty-four days separate that presentation from the benching. The statement of March 11 does not point to a match, a result or a player as the cause. It points to the economics of competing internationally, and to a decision taken at shareholder level.

Why podi is leaving the lineup too

A reader could expect the one Finn of the roster to be the first name of the new project. He is not, and ENCE explains why. The statement says podi wishes to pursue tier-one Counter-Strike instead of working on a project with upcoming Finnish players, and that the club respects that choice. HLTV reports the same reason.

So podi joins the other four on the bench, available for transfer. He had the highest rating of the five over the previous three months, 1.11 across 49 maps.

The distinction matters for all six people concerned. ENCE has said they are available, not that they are gone, and it has given no deadline for the discussions.

From the Katowice final to number 67

ENCE's name in Counter-Strike rests on one spring. In 2019 a Finnish roster led by Aleksib reached the grand final of the IEM Katowice Major. A Major is one of the championships sponsored by Valve, the game's publisher, and the most valued title in Counter-Strike. Dot Esports, recalling the run in its report on the benching, notes that the lineup built on the partnership between Aleksib and the AWPer allu lost that final to Astralis and gave rise to the slogan EZ4ENCE, which still follows the club.

HLTV writes that the team struggled to repeat that result after the period of instability that followed the removal of its Finnish in-game leader, the player who calls the team's tactics during a match. The site lists Aleksib today as a Natus Vincere player.

The club then turned to international lineups, and one of them worked. Dot Esports recalls that the rosters led by Snappi brought ENCE back toward the top, with many playoff appearances and the IEM Dallas title in 2023. According to the same outlet, the later transfer of that core to Falcons left ENCE with a rebuild that did not take.

The figures of the current game, Counter-Strike 2, tell the rest. HLTV counts one Major appearance for ENCE in Counter-Strike 2, PGL Copenhagen, and no place in the top 20 of its world ranking since the first half of 2024. In the ranking dated March 9, 2026, two days before the announcement, ENCE stood 67th.

What stays in place: the academy and ENCE Prospects

The statement is careful to separate the main team from the club's youth structures. On the second team it says: "ENCE Academy will continue operating normally during this transition period."

An academy is a development roster run by a club to prepare young players for its main team. ENCE presented its academy lineup for the spring season on February 11, 2026: five players and a head coach. One of them, the club wrote then, is the first player to come up to the academy from ENCE Prospects, a coaching program for younger players that the organization has run since 2023.

That lower step keeps its calendar as well. According to the statement of March 11, ENCE Prospects will take part as planned in NUKE-Liiga Season 2, a Finnish youth league that starts on March 18.

The path the club describes for its future main team, Finnish talent brought through step by step, therefore already has two levels in activity. What is missing on March 12 is the top one.

Where Finnish Counter-Strike stands

The pool ENCE now turns to can be measured. Dot Esports, in its report of March 11, lists four Finnish teams in the ranking kept by Valve itself: ENCE Academy is 101st, HAVU 135th, CSDIILIT 170th and SINQU 281st. The outlet adds that HAVU regularly sat between 30th and 40th in the years when ENCE was at its peak.

Of those four, only ENCE's own second roster is inside the top 130 of that list. The same outlet's reading is that a return to the top 30 with a national lineup would take years. That is an assessment by Dot Esports, not a target set by the club, which has given no ranking objective and no timetable.

For the benched players the next step depends on offers. For ENCE it depends on announcements it has promised without dating them: the plans for the Counter-Strike team, and the direction of the organization after its restructuring. The one date the club has put on paper is March 18, when its youngest players begin their league season.

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