FaZe part ways with coach NEO after nearly three years

FaZe will play its next Counter-Strike tournament with a different voice behind the players. The organization parted ways with head coach Filip "NEO" Kubski on Monday, March 16, 2026, HLTV reported the same evening. Analyst Dominik "GruBy" Swiderski takes over for the time being: FaZe said he will fill in as interim head coach while it explores its options for the future.

The timing leaves no room to settle in. The team's next match is on Wednesday, March 18, at BLAST Open Rotterdam, and it comes in the middle of a race that matters more than any single event: the invitations to the IEM Cologne Major, the next of the game's championship tournaments, are decided in the coming weeks, and FaZe is not sure of getting one.

What FaZe announced

The wording is that the two sides parted ways. HLTV's report carries no statement from NEO, and none from the organization beyond the line on the interim arrangement, so the reasons given in public stop there.

Two things are settled. The first is who stands behind the team now. GruBy, a 31-year-old from Poland, was the team's analyst, the staff member who studies opponents and the team's own matches, and he moves into the head coach's seat without the title being his for good. An interim coach holds the post until the organization names a permanent one, and FaZe has given no date for that.

The second is that the five players do not change. HLTV lists the line-up as Finn "karrigan" Andersen, David "frozen" Čerňanský, Helvijs "broky" Saukants, Jakub "jcobbb" Pietruszewski and Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken.

Nearly three years, three trophies

NEO took the job in July 2023, after Robert "RobbaN" Dahlström stepped down, according to HLTV. It was his first post as a coach, and it lasted nearly three years.

The record he leaves is one of a team that reached finals often and won some of them. Under him, FaZe lifted three trophies named by HLTV: IEM Sydney 2023, the CS Asia Championships 2023 and IEM Chengdu. It lost three other finals in the same period, at IEM Katowice 2024 and at the BLAST Fall Final and the BLAST World Final in 2023.

The Majors tell the same story at a higher level. Majors are the championship tournaments of Counter-Strike 2, the game published by Valve. FaZe finished runner-up at three of the four Majors played since the game moved to Counter-Strike 2, in Copenhagen, Shanghai and Budapest.

The last of those finals is recent: FaZe ended 2025 with it. At the Budapest Major, the team came within a moment of going out in Stage 1, the first phase of the tournament, HLTV wrote, then went all the way to the grand final.

A line-up rebuilt in 2025

That run came from a team that had just been changed. FaZe struggled for much of 2025, according to HLTV, and ended up replacing two players, EliGE and rain, with Twistzz and jcobbb, a swap that did not at first improve its results.

The new five was still short of matches together when the year turned. Speaking to HLTV on February 4, 2026, after the team's elimination from IEM Kraków, karrigan described it as a young team that was playing about its fifth tournament together, and recalled that it had started with rain playing in place of jcobbb. He said the communication the team had found at the Major had been missing in key moments.

The Budapest final therefore stood as proof of what the line-up could do, and as a level it has not found again. Karrigan said in the same interview that he knew how good the team could be.

Three series won out of twelve in 2026

The results since January are what the departure follows. HLTV counts FaZe's record for 2026 at three series won and nine lost, a series being a match played over several maps. The team has gone out in the group stage of every tournament it has entered this year.

HLTV's reports name four of those exits. FaZe was knocked out of BLAST Bounty, an online event, by EYEBALLERS. At IEM Kraków, which it had prepared with a five-day training camp according to karrigan, it was sent home by MOUZ in a two-map series that HLTV called dominant. Karrigan said afterward that he thought his side had taken a single round on the attacking side in the whole game, and that the team had not really shown up against 3DMAX earlier in the event either. At PGL Cluj-Napoca and in Stage 2 of ESL Pro League Season 23, it finished the Swiss stage with one win and three defeats. In a Swiss stage, teams keep meeting opponents with the same record until they reach a set number of wins, which sends them through, or of losses, which sends them home.

Karrigan's words in February already described a team looking for an answer. He told HLTV in Kraków that the tournament had been a setback, that the team had to look forward and that the season had only just started. He added that there should never be an excuse for making mistakes. Two tournaments later, with the same outcome in each, FaZe and its coach parted ways.

HLTV's ranking of March 16 has FaZe 11th in the world, four places behind Aurora, its next opponent.

A Major invite hanging by a thread

The coaching change lands at a tight point of the calendar. The IEM Cologne Major will be played from June 2 to 21, 2026, in Cologne, Germany, with 32 teams and a prize pool of US$1.25 million, according to the announcement of its organizer, ESL. The tournament has four phases: three stages that cut the field down, then the playoffs, held in the LANXESS arena from June 18 to 21, with the quarterfinals spread over the first two days, the semifinals on June 20 and the grand final on June 21. Broadcasts are planned in more than 20 languages. ESL expects more than 50,000 spectators from over 70 countries.

Cologne adds to the weight of the event. It is the first Major in the city in a decade, after the editions of 2014, 2015 and 2016, won by Ninjas in Pyjamas, Fnatic and SK Gaming, and it is the 11th Major ESL has run since the first one, at DreamHack Winter in 2013.

Its 32 places are invitations, and they follow a ranking.

FaZe sits at the edge of that list. On March 12, HLTV wrote that the team's hopes of qualifying were hanging by a thread: it was 12th in Europe, and the invitations were to be decided about three weeks later. In its report on the coaching change, the site said FaZe was barely on the cusp of an invitation in its own projection of the list.

That is why FaZe has added an unusual stop to its schedule. The team signed up for DraculaN Season 6, a tournament in Bucharest, Romania, from March 29 to April 2, with a prize pool of US$15,000. HLTV describes it as a tier-two event, the level below the main circuit, played on LAN, with the teams in the same venue. FaZe is one of several teams turning to such events to collect ranking points before the cutoff, the site wrote: Team Liquid, FUT, Monte and fnatic were among the entrants it listed, and it judged Team Liquid, then 16th in its ranking, to be in a more difficult position than FaZe, with FUT 13th. The event is organized by Digital Crusade, and its final list of teams was due on March 15. Of the ten entrants HLTV named on March 12, seven stood outside the top 20 of its ranking, down to 80th place, which gives a measure of the level FaZe has stepped down to in search of points. In its report on the coaching change, HLTV noted that Rotterdam and DraculaN can still bring FaZe points.

What comes next

The interim coach's first weeks are already mapped out by the calendar.

The opening opponent is a demanding one. Aurora, FaZe's first rival in Rotterdam, was the runner-up of ESL Pro League Season 23, the event FaZe left in the Swiss stage. HLTV had called the Rotterdam event a tall order for FaZe even before the coach left.

After Bucharest the team does not travel far. HLTV reported that FaZe will stay in the city for PGL Bucharest, which starts on April 3.

The question FaZe left open on Monday is the permanent one. The organization has said only that it is exploring its options, which covers the choice of a head coach and sets no deadline for it. Until then the analyst coaches, the five players stay, and the coming weeks decide whether a team that played the last Major final is invited to the next Major at all.

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