NIP put the Young Ninjas academy on hold and release its players

Ninjas in Pyjamas have stopped their academy team. The Swedish organization announced on Monday, July 20, 2026, that the Young Ninjas project is put on hold for the foreseeable future, HLTV reported the same day, and that everyone still attached to it has been released: three players and their coach.

An academy team is a second roster that an organization runs below its main team, usually with younger players, in smaller tournaments, so that they can learn the job before being asked to do it at the top. Young Ninjas was the academy of NIP's Counter-Strike 2 division. In its statement, as HLTV relays it, the organization calls the decision a difficult one and ties it to an evaluation of the future of what it calls its competitive ecosystem. It gives no financial reason and no date for a return.

The word NIP chose is a hold. HLTV's own report speaks of a closure in its opening lines, but the statement it prints does not: the project is paused while the organization evaluates the future of that ecosystem.

HLTV report of July 20, 2026, and the HLTV world ranking of July 13, 2026.

Who leaves, and who does not

The three players are the Latvian rud and the Pole tein, both 20, and the Finn joeski, 19. Their coach, the Swede Zitte, 31, goes with them. All four are now free agents, which means no team holds their contract and any organization can sign them without paying a transfer fee. Their last matches in NIP colors were played in June, in Series 7 of the European Pro League.

That makes three players, not five. The academy was already short before the announcement. One of its members, the Belgian rifler n0te, had been moved to the main team four weeks earlier, and HLTV's report makes clear that he is not among those released: he is, in its words, in the middle of a temporary promotion. A rifler is a player who uses the game's standard rifles, as opposed to the AWPer, who plays the sniper rifle.

So the decision leaves one Young Ninjas player inside the organization, on the main roster, with a status that NIP has described only as temporary.

An academy that fed tier-one teams

HLTV describes Young Ninjas as one of the most successful academy setups when it comes to sending players on to tier-one teams, the informal name for the clubs that play the biggest tournaments. It lists five players who wore the academy's jersey and where each of them stands today.

Three of the five are Swedish, and two of the five play for NIP itself. The second fact is the one an academy exists for. xKacpersky is a starter in the main team. n0te is the other.

The academy was also winning in the months before the hold. When NIP promoted n0te in June, HLTV listed what Young Ninjas had done in 2026: second place at Betclic Clash 2026, first place in United21 League Season 47, and first place in CCT 2026 Contenders Europe Series 2.

Seven weeks of change at NIP

The hold does not come alone. It is the latest in a run of announcements that have reshaped NIP's Counter-Strike division since the start of June, each of them reported by HLTV on the day. Five of them concern who works and plays for the organization.

The first of these concerned the man who ran the division. THREAT, a Swede of 38 who had been linked to NIP on and off since 2016 and had twice been its head coach, became general manager in 2023. His two spells as head coach ran from 2016 to 2018 and from 2020 to 2021, and HLTV credits him with five notable trophies across them. His departure was announced on June 1.

The second concerned the roster. cairne had arrived from Inner Circle in January. With him NIP won two tournaments, HyperX Roman Imperium Cup VI and Stake Ranked Episode 2, but did not qualify for the Cologne Major, the championship sponsored by Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike, that was played in June. HLTV wrote that the benching followed a disappointing season that ended with that miss. A benched player stays under contract but no longer plays.

To fill the seat, NIP looked down one floor. n0te had joined Young Ninjas from Nemesis in February, and HLTV credited him with a 1.18 average rating over the year in the academy, the site's own measure of individual performance. He stood 50th in HLTV's Prospects ranking for June. NIP told HLTV that he was signed up for two events, the XSE Pro League and Stake Ranked Episode 3.

Around those moves, the main team has slipped in HLTV's weekly world ranking: 23rd on June 1, 24th on June 8, 26th on June 22 and 27th on July 13. The academy went from 116th on June 22 to 129th on July 13, after its last matches.

Other organizations went the other way

The timing stands out because several of NIP's rivals have spent 2026 building or leaning on their academies. HLTV's news pages record five such decisions since March.

Team Vitality, ranked first in the world at the time, created its academy on April 22, with a five known until then as Project H as its first roster. FaZe Clan followed on June 3 with a roster named FaZe Up Next, coached by the former professional gade, with RobbaN as head of Counter-Strike for the academy division. MOUZ, whose academy MOUZ NXT had been down to three players since April, signed two more on July 10 to field a full five again. HLTV noted that the team had not played since May.

Two other clubs used their academy as a reserve of starters. Virtus.pro promoted two VP.Prodigy players to its main roster on March 12, which completed a lineup rebuilt after three players were benched. ENCE went further on April 1 and promoted its academy squad as an interim main roster.

NIP did the same thing as Virtus.pro on a smaller scale in June, with one player. A month later it is the only organization in this list to have stepped back from the model. Its statement does not compare itself with anyone, and nothing in it says the organization has changed its view of academies in general: it says the project is paused while the future of its competitive ecosystem is evaluated.

What a pause changes in practice

For the three released players, the change is immediate. They can join any team, including an academy of another organization, without a fee being owed to NIP.

For the main team, one consequence is practical. An academy is where an organization finds a stand-in, a temporary replacement, at short notice, without negotiating with another club. That is exactly how n0te arrived in June. With Young Ninjas paused, NIP has no second roster to draw from: a future vacancy would have to be filled from outside, by a transfer, a loan or a free agent.

The other consequence concerns n0te himself. His promotion was announced for the upcoming events, with two tournaments named, and no end date. The team he was promoted from no longer plays. NIP's statement, as reported, does not say whether his place in the main team becomes permanent.

What comes next for NIP

The main roster listed on HLTV's page is unchanged: Snappi, sjuush, stavn and xKacpersky, with n0te as the fifth player and Xizt as coach. The bench has thinned in the meantime: on June 25, G2 signed r1nkle, who had been sitting on it since April. One date on the team's calendar is already public.

NIP is one of the 32 teams of BLAST Bounty 2026 Season 2, whose field HLTV published on June 18. The tournament is played in single elimination, where one lost series ends a team's run, and each series is a best-of-three, won by the first team to take two maps. Its online stage runs from July 21 to July 26, and the eight teams that survive it play the finals in Malta from July 30 to August 2.

On the academy itself, nothing is scheduled. NIP has announced no date for a decision and no condition for a restart. The only timetable in its statement is the one in its wording: the foreseeable future.

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