Ninjas in Pyjamas sign adamb from OG and field a full five again

For the first time since June, Ninjas in Pyjamas have a five without a stand-in in it. The organization signed the Swedish rifler adamb from OG, HLTV reported on Monday, September 14, 2026, three days before the team's opening match at Logitech G Play Connect in Warsaw. He takes the place of n0te, the academy player who had been filling the fifth seat on a temporary basis.

It is the second arrival in two weeks. On September 2, NIP had announced Krimbo, on loan from BIG, as its new in-game leader. HLTV's report on adamb gives no fee and no contract length, and does not say whether the deal is a purchase or a loan; its roster box marks Krimbo as on loan and carries no such mark for adamb.

HLTV reports of April 9, September 2 and September 14, 2026. The 49 days run from September 14 to November 2.

A return to the club that trained him

adamb is 21 and knows the house. He played for Young Ninjas, the organization's academy team, in 2022 and 2023, HLTV recalls. He then joined Metizport and later OG, where he spent just over a year. He comes back after more than three years away from NIP's colors.

What he did at OG is the reason for the move. A rifler is a player who uses the game's standard rifles and takes most of the ordinary duels of a round, as opposed to the AWPer, who carries the sniper rifle. HLTV measures every player with a rating, its single number for a player's output. adamb averaged 1.13 during his time at OG, the highest figure in that team.

The site's roster box, which covers the three months before the report, puts him at 1.14 over 47 maps, a map being one full game inside a series. That is the best three-month figure among the five players NIP now field.

The numbers are not all comparable. adamb's were earned in another team, against the opponents OG met. Krimbo's cover only the 21 maps he has played since his arrival, after almost a year without regular competition. And an in-game leader, the player who decides the team's tactics in each round, is not judged first on his own rating.

The fifth seat stops being temporary

The player who makes way is n0te, a 20-year-old Belgian rifler. NIP promoted him from Young Ninjas on June 22, on a temporary basis, after benching cairne nine days earlier, HLTV reported at the time. The organization spoke then of the upcoming events. The arrangement lasted twelve weeks.

HLTV's report now lists n0te as benched, next to Snappi, the former in-game leader who stepped down from the active roster on August 31. Over the last three months n0te played the same 62 maps as sjuush, stavn and xKacpersky and averaged a 1.01 rating. The report does not say whether he goes back to the academy five.

cairne, whose benching opened the seat, is no longer an NIP player: he was transferred to fnatic during the summer, HLTV wrote on September 2.

With adamb the question of who the fifth player is has a settled answer. That matters beyond the name: Snappi himself told HLTV in August that frequent changes of personnel had hurt the team's consistency, and that what it needed was stability.

Six months, five steps

adamb is the last piece of a rebuild that began in the spring. On April 1, HLTV listed NIP's five as Snappi, sjuush, cairne, xKacpersky and r1nkle. Two of them, sjuush and xKacpersky, are still in the active roster. The other three places have changed hands, one of them twice.

The result is a younger team. The five who played through August, with Snappi and n0te, had an average age of 25.2 years, going by the ages HLTV prints: 36, 27, 24, 20 and 19. The five listed on September 14 are 27, 24, 23, 21 and 19, an average of 22.8. sjuush, at 27, is now the oldest player in the roster.

The coach has not changed. Xizt, who is 35, remains in charge.

The season that led here

The two September deals answer a year that has not gone the way NIP wanted. The team missed the IEM Cologne Major, played in June: a defeat to HEROIC at Stake Ranked Episode 1 in Barcelona on April 3 left it nearly 50 points below the 17th place of the European standings that it needed, HLTV reported at the time. The roster changes of April followed within two weeks.

The summer did not settle things. At the Esports World Cup in Paris in mid-August, NIP lost a single-map match to Legacy, beat BetBoom, then lost two maps to one to Astralis on August 16 in a match that decided a place in the playoffs, according to HLTV. Two weeks later Snappi stepped down. Under his leadership, which began at the start of 2025, the team's best result at a big event was a quarter-final at PGL Astana in 2025, alongside three titles at smaller tournaments, HLTV recalled on August 31.

A new caller with a rifler beside him

The other September arrival explains what kind of team adamb joins. Krimbo, a 23-year-old German, came through BIG's academy from March 2022 and played for the organization until he was benched in October 2025, HLTV reported on September 2. In that period he posted a 1.10 rating and went to three Majors between 2022 and 2024.

He had played three official matches in almost a year before joining NIP, all as a stand-in for Liquid at the first stage of IEM Kraków 2026. One of them was a win over NIP.

At NIP he takes the in-game leadership. HLTV's report of September 2 did not give the length of the loan or say whether it carries an option to buy. BIG were ranked 23rd by HLTV on August 31, three places above NIP.

So NIP have filled their two open questions of the end of August in opposite ways: the tactical voice comes on loan from a rival's bench, and the firepower comes from a team ranked lower, in the person of a player the club had already trained.

What OG are left with

For OG the move takes away their best-rated player. HLTV's roster box of September 14 lists four names around coach Lambert: cadiaN, bodyy, spooke and pr1metapz. The report names no replacement.

Two of those four did not arrive as outright signings. HLTV's report of May 20, written when pr1metapz joined on loan from Sangal, also listed bodyy as on loan from 3DMAX. OG had failed to qualify for the IEM Cologne Major at the beginning of April and stood 72nd in Valve's standings that day.

HLTV's own world ranking of September 7 has OG 64th. NIP are 26th, M80 30th and Metizport, adamb's club between Young Ninjas and OG, 70th.

Warsaw first, then the race to Singapore

adamb's debut is set. Logitech G Play Connect runs from September 17 to 23 in Warsaw, with 12 teams and a prize pool of US$100,000, according to HLTV's event page. The group stage is a round-robin of single-map matches, in which each team meets every other team of its group once. The playoffs are single-elimination series played as best-of-three, won by the first team to take two maps, and the final is a best-of-five.

NIP are in Group A with B8, Luminosity, M80, GamerLegion and Metizport, which means adamb meets one of his former teams in his first week. The opening match, on September 17, is against M80, who won Roman Imperium Cup VIII on September 13, according to HLTV.

The larger target is the PGL Singapore Major, the Major that follows Cologne. Majors are the most important tournaments of the Counter-Strike calendar. It is scheduled from November 24 to December 13 with 32 teams, and PGL, the organizer, has set the cut-off for invitations at November 2, HLTV reported in April. Invitations are decided by the Valve Regional Standings, the ranking kept by the game's publisher.

NIP have ground to make up there. In Valve's August update they were 27th in the world with 1,444 points. In the table HLTV printed on September 9 with the September update, they were 29th with 1,336 points, behind GamerLegion on 1,343 and ahead of Betclic on 1,330. That is 108 points and two places lost in a month. Valve corrected that release the same evening to take out events that had not finished, HLTV added in an update, and its page still shows the first version, which is the one used here. The same table had Spirit first on 2,031 points, MOUZ second on 1,902 and Falcons third on 1,881; BIG, Krimbo's parent club, were 16th on 1,479. HLTV wrote on September 2 that NIP had stayed under the top 20 of those standings through 2026 and had mostly played second-tier events.

Warsaw is not the only stop before the cut-off. HLTV's list of August 4 of the events that draw invitations from the standings also includes Stake Ranked Episode 4 from October 1 to 4, ESL Pro League Season 24 from October 3 to 11 and the Thunderpick World Championship from October 12 to 19.

NIP spent the summer naming who leaves. With seven weeks to the cut-off, the list of who plays is finally complete.

From the signing to November 2 there are 49 days. The five who will use them have never played an official match together.

The .esports registry publishes Esports Observer, so the whole scene can read its news for free.