IEM Cologne Major 2026: HLTV ranks its 11 best players and All-Stars

Four days after Falcons lifted the trophy at the LANXESS arena, the statistics side of the IEM Cologne Major has its own final word. On Thursday, June 25, 2026, HLTV, the reference news and statistics site for Counter-Strike, published its list of the tournament's best players, ranked in order, together with seven honorable mentions and a five-player All-Star lineup.

The ranking is led by m0NESY, already named most valuable player of the Major on the night of the final. Behind him come ten more players who earned what the site calls an EVP, an excellent valuable player award, the mention it gives to the standout players of a tournament below its MVP. The article, written by NER0cs, opens on the point that a host of players did enough to leave Germany with a Major EVP.

HLTV, The EVPs and All-Stars of IEM Cologne Major 2026, June 25, 2026.

How HLTV judges a Major

HLTV gives MVP and EVP awards at what it calls Big Events, the top tier of Counter-Strike 2 tournaments. One player receives the MVP medal. A wider group receives EVP mentions, and for the Cologne Major the site ranked them in order, so that a reader can see who it rated above whom. A Major is one of the championships sponsored by Valve, the publisher of the game.

The site publishes no points table for its choices. The reasons it gives player by player lean on the same handful of measures. The first is Rating 3.0, HLTV's own composite figure built from kills, damage, survival, KAST, multi-kills and Swing. KAST is the share of rounds in which a player gets a kill, an assist, survives or is traded; Swing estimates how much a player's actions changed his team's chance of winning each round. Around the rating, HLTV weighs how a player did in maps his team won, how he did against teams in the world's top ten, how he played in the four days at the arena, and how far his team went.

Nine of the eleven ranked players come from the four semifinalists: Falcons, FURIA, Spirit and Aurora. The other two, ZywOo and HeavyGod, played for teams that went out in the quarterfinals.

The champions take the top three

Falcons beat FURIA 3-0 in the grand final on June 21, with three maps won 13-8, and three of their five players occupy the first three places. HLTV already explained its MVP choice on the night of the final: NiKo, kyousuke and m0NESY had comparable numbers in the maps Falcons won and seven map awards each, and m0NESY's overall rating of 1.25 settled it.

The June 25 list adds detail to that verdict. It credits m0NESY with consistency, round wins and a fast start in the grand final, and gives his 1.25 rating against teams ranked in the world's top ten. m0NESY himself credited karrigan, who joined Falcons from FaZe on April 20, for the change of style behind his form.

kyousuke is second. His 1.30 rating across the playoff days at the arena was the best of anyone at the event, according to HLTV, and he had highlights in every series played there. It is his third EVP in three events. Of the Falcons players, the site writes, he is the one who gained most from the change of captain.

NiKo is third. He rated 1.29 in the maps Falcons won and ended the grand final as its top player, by HLTV's account. What kept him behind his two teammates was his output in rounds his team won, which the site found weaker than theirs. The title in Cologne was NiKo's first Major, won at his 17th attempt.

The table below gives the eleven ranked players in HLTV's order, with the team each played for and the figure the site puts forward for him. Six teams are represented: Falcons and FURIA with three players each, Spirit with two, and Vitality, G2 and Aurora with one.

Spirit and Vitality: big numbers, earlier exits

Two of the biggest statistical tournaments in the ranking came from players whose teams went out before the final. ZywOo of Vitality finished at 1.42 over the whole Major and topped three of the event's statistical tables: average damage per round, at 92.6, kills per round, at 0.89, and Swing, at plus 3.80 percent. In the six maps Vitality won, HLTV gave him a rating of 1.90. Vitality, the reigning Major champions, went out in the quarterfinal to Falcons on June 19, and the site notes that ZywOo was quiet on the first and third maps of that series. He is ranked fifth.

donk of Spirit rated 1.34 over the event and 1.53 in Stage 3, the last stage before the playoffs. His semifinal against Falcons on June 20 was the low point, at 0.97, in a series Spirit lost 2-1 after two maps went to overtime. HLTV kept him fourth on the weight of the rest of his tournament.

His teammate sh1ro is ninth, with a record the site says no one else at the event matched. Spirit played 14 maps in Cologne, and in every one of them sh1ro rated 1.00 or better with more kills than deaths. He was player of the map three times. HLTV counts this as his 26th EVP at a Big Event, which places him fourth on its all-time list.

FURIA's three in a first Major final

FURIA reached a Major final for the first time in Cologne, after beating 9z in the quarterfinal and Aurora in the semifinal, and three of their players are ranked. molodoy is sixth. His strength, in HLTV's reading, was consistency: 87 percent of his maps ended above a 1.00 rating, and he rated 1.26 in the grand final, the only FURIA player above 1.00 that day.

YEKINDAR is seventh. He led FURIA with a 1.42 rating in the maps they won, but rated 0.89 in the final, a result the site says cost him any chance of the top award. It is his first EVP of 2026. yuurih is tenth, with four EVP-level maps at the arena, held back by a quiet series against Falcons and by his output in rounds FURIA won.

Between them in the ranking stands HeavyGod of G2, eighth with a 1.26 event rating and nine standout maps. G2 went out in the quarterfinal against Spirit. Wicadia of Aurora closes the list in eleventh place. He led his team with a 1.39 rating in the maps it won and with 1.06 kills per round in the rounds it won, as Aurora reached the semifinals. HLTV places him last of the eleven because Aurora's road to the semifinal was not the hardest a team at that stage could have faced.

Seven honorable mentions

Behind the ranked eleven, HLTV names seven more players whose tournaments it wanted to recognize. KSCERATO of FURIA rated 1.30 in the maps his team won, but 0.98 against teams in the world's top ten. ropz of Vitality rated 1.27 in map wins. Magnojez of BETBOOM rated 1.36 in the maps his team won, and b1t of Natus Vincere rated 1.17 in the group stages.

luchov of 9z is mentioned for a three-map series against PARIVISION in which he rated 2.00. afro of Monte is credited with solid performances, without a figure attached. The seventh honorable mention goes to a player of FUT.

The list is a reminder of how wide the Major's field was. ESL registered 32 rosters for the event, which ran from June 2 to June 21, and HLTV counted 31 players making their first Major appearance before it began.

The All-Star five and the three-player cap

The last part of the article is HLTV's All-Star lineup, five players chosen to form the best team of the tournament. The site applies a rule that no more than three players from one team may be selected. Falcons had more than three players good enough for a place, HLTV writes, so one had to drop out.

The lineup reads karrigan, m0NESY, NiKo, donk and HeavyGod. HeavyGod fills the slot HLTV calls Anchor of the Event, the linchpin of its team of the tournament, for the third time in 2026, edging out yuurih for it. With three Falcons players, the All-Stars use the full allowance for one team; Spirit and G2 provide the other two.

karrigan's place is the one the ranking alone would not predict, since he is not among the eleven. HLTV wrote that the champions' captain, who had joined them two months before the final, could not be left out.

What comes next for the ranked players

The next Major on the calendar, the PGL Major Singapore, is set for November 24 to December 13 with 32 teams and a US$1,250,000 prize pool, the same size as Cologne's US$1.25 million. Its invitations follow Valve's regional standings, with a cut-off on November 2, and HLTV's calculation of June 16, based on the results in Cologne and the rules as they stood, gives Europe 18 places, the Americas nine and Asia five.

For several of the ranked eleven, the Cologne mention is not the first of 2026. kyousuke now has three EVPs in three events, HeavyGod has been Anchor of the Event three times this year, and YEKINDAR opens his account for the year.

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