Falcons sign karrigan from FaZe and bench kyxsan before the Major

Falcons have a new voice in charge of their Counter-Strike 2 team. The club confirmed on Monday, April 20, 2026, that it has signed karrigan from FaZe, reported HLTV, the reference news site for the game. The Dane arrives as in-game leader, the player who chooses the team's tactics and adjusts them while a round is being played.

The seat was free for less than an hour. Earlier the same afternoon Falcons had announced that kyxsan, who had led the team for 16 months, was moved to the bench. A benched player stays under contract with his club but no longer plays in its five.

HLTV describes the arrival as a signing from FaZe. No fee, no contract length and no other term has been published by either club.

Three announcements in one afternoon

The move was made public in three parts, each reported by HLTV within 48 minutes of the first. One club spoke, then the other, twice.

The coach listed with the new roster is unchanged: zonic remains in charge of a lineup in which four of the five players are the ones who played in Rio the day before.

karrigan announced the move himself on X. In his post, quoted by HLTV, he said he was joining Falcons and reconnecting with NiKo and with zonic, and that he was looking forward to his new teammates.

kyxsan also spoke on X. He wrote that the timing was unfortunate with the Cologne Major so close, that the organization had felt a change was needed and that he respected the decision. He described his time in the team as a good experience.

Seven finals, one trophy

Falcons are not replacing the leader of a team in trouble. In HLTV's world ranking of April 13 they stood fifth. What HLTV's reports dwell on is what happens at the end of tournaments.

kyxsan, a Macedonian, joined Falcons in January 2025 together with TeSeS and degster, when the club signed the core of the HEROIC team. Since then, HLTV counts, Falcons have reached seven grand finals, the last match of a tournament. They won one of them, at PGL Bucharest. It remains the only Counter-Strike trophy the club has won.

The six others ended in second place. The most recent was the BLAST Bounty Finals in January 2026. HLTV sums the period up by writing that the team struggled to close out its playoff runs.

IEM Rio, the tournament that ended on Sunday, April 19, followed the same pattern on a smaller scale. Falcons came through the group stage and, in the match that sent them to the semi-finals, ended an 18-match winning streak of Vitality, the top-ranked team in the world. Three days later they lost their semi-final to Spirit without winning a map: 13-7 on Dust2 and 13-4 on Mirage. A map is one game of a series, and a series here is won by the first team to take two maps.

They recovered on Sunday to beat FURIA, ranked third in the world, for third place, by 13-11 on both Dust2 and Mirage. The bench announcement came the next day.

What the ratings say about the swap

With its reports of April 20, HLTV printed each player's rating over the previous three months. A rating is the single figure the site computes for every professional player from his statistics.

The chart shows that Falcons did not sign a player with better personal statistics than the one he replaces. Over the period, karrigan's rating with FaZe was 0.90 and kyxsan's with Falcons 0.94. The two figures come from different teams, different opponents and different results, so they are not a direct comparison, but they make one point clear: the club changed its caller, not its firepower.

The firepower is elsewhere in the five. m0NESY, 20, has the highest figure at 1.29. kyousuke, 18, and NiKo, 29, follow at 1.14 and 1.12. In the two matches that closed IEM Rio the gap was wider than over three months. kyxsan had the lowest rating of the five Falcons players in the semi-final against Spirit, 0.67, and again in the third-place match, 0.84, while m0NESY led the team both times with 1.33 and 1.37.

The signing also changes the age of the team. HLTV's player data gives karrigan as 36 and kyxsan as 25. The four players who stay are 18, 20, 25 and 29.

A partnership from 2017 inside a new five

One relationship in the new lineup is not new. karrigan and NiKo played together at FaZe for two years, in 2017 and 2018, and won seven titles there, HLTV recalls. NiKo now gets back the caller of that period.

karrigan's own record as a leader is the other thing Falcons acquire. According to HLTV's report on his departure, his career at FaZe had two parts: a first spell from 2016 to 2019, then two years at MOUZ, then a return in February 2021. In that second spell the team won eight notable LAN events, a LAN being a tournament played in a venue. Among them were the Antwerp Major in 2022, the first Major title in FaZe's history, and the Intel Grand Slam Season 4 in 2023. The last was IEM Chengdu in 2024.

A Major is one of the championships sponsored by Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike, and the most valued title in the game. Under karrigan, FaZe also reached the finals of the Majors in Copenhagen, Shanghai and Budapest. In Budapest they lost the final 3-1 to Vitality.

Set against Falcons' record of one win in seven finals, that is the experience karrigan brings: a caller who has led a team through the last match of the biggest tournaments, several times.

The Major rule behind the timing

kyxsan pointed to the calendar in his statement, and the calendar matters for a precise reason. The IEM Cologne Major is played from June 2 to 21, according to its organizer ESL, with 32 teams and a prize pool of US$1,250,000. The deadline for invitations was April 6, HLTV reported, and Valve's rulebook sorts rosters by the Valve Regional Standings, the ranking Valve publishes. Falcons changed their leader two weeks after that date.

In the list of invited teams HLTV published on April 5, Falcons are one of eight teams that enter the Major directly in Stage 3, the last of three opening stages. The five printed under their name is NiKo, TeSeS, m0NESY, kyxsan and kyousuke.

Valve's Major rulebook calls an invited five the Core Lineup and requires the roster a team registers to match it. It allows each team one coach and one substitute. If an invited roster is no longer intact, the rulebook says, it does not take part and the next roster in the ranking is invited.

The announcement of April 20, as HLTV reports it, says nothing about how Falcons will register for Cologne. What the rulebook shows is the room available: one change to the invited five, through the single substitute place.

The stake is a high starting position. Each opening stage is a 16-team bracket in the Swiss format, where teams with the same record meet each other until they reach three wins or three losses. The best eight of Stage 3 go on to the playoffs, played in the LANXESS arena in Cologne from June 18.

What FaZe are left with

For FaZe the same afternoon reads differently. The club loses the player who had led it for five years and, by HLTV's account, has not announced a replacement. The lineup listed in its report has four players, frozen, broky, jcobbb and Twistzz, and a head coach, enkay J, who was named only days before.

The departure follows a difficult stretch for FaZe. The team did not qualify for the Cologne Major, the first time it has missed one since the organization entered the game in 2016, HLTV wrote. After Budapest it had kept the same roster through the off-season, and the same problems returned when the new season began. At PGL Bucharest, karrigan told HLTV he was open to leaving if results did not improve.

HLTV's ranking of April 13 placed FaZe 14th, nine places behind Falcons. The team's next events are BLAST Rivals Season 1, from April 29 to May 3, and IEM Atlanta, from May 11 to 17. That leaves nine days between the departure and the first of them.

Nineteen days to the first match

Falcons have more time, though not much. Their next tournament is PGL Astana, which starts on May 9, HLTV wrote in its report on the benching: 19 days after the signing. Two more events follow closely.

The CS Asia Championships are organized by Perfect World, and Falcons were among the 14 teams invited directly when the list was published on March 31. HLTV noted then that PGL Astana ends two days before the Shanghai event begins, so the new lineup plays its first two tournaments back to back.

Between the signing and the first day of the Major there are 43 days. In that time the new five has two tournaments to play together before the one that matters most.

For kyxsan, the announcement settles less. He is benched, not released, and neither he nor Falcons has said what comes next for him.

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