Ninjas in Pyjamas sign stavn as primary AWPer after benching r1nkle

Thirty-five minutes separated the two announcements. On April 15, 2026, HLTV, the reference news site for Counter-Strike, reported at 11:25 that Ninjas in Pyjamas had moved r1nkle to the bench. At 12:00 it reported that the organization, known as NIP, had signed stavn to take his place in the starting five.

The new player arrives with a job description. NIP announced him as its primary AWPer, the player who uses the AWP, the game's most powerful sniper rifle, round after round. It is a role stavn has not held before as a first choice, and it is the second piece of roster business NIP has completed in two weeks, after making xKacpersky's loan from ENCE permanent on April 1. Between the two came the result that prompted the change: NIP will not be at the IEM Cologne Major.

HLTV reports of April 1, April 9 and April 15, 2026.

What NIP announced

The signing is to the active line-up, with immediate effect on the team's structure. HLTV reports that stavn replaces r1nkle in the starting five and takes over the main sniper's role. The report gives no fee, no contract length and no other term.

HLTV reported on January 7 that Astralis had released stavn from his contract at his own request, and its page listed him without a team from that date.

The other half of the announcement concerns the player who makes way. NIP has benched r1nkle, which means he remains under contract but is out of the five that plays. HLTV's report does not say he has been put up for transfer. In its statement, as HLTV reported it, the organization praised his professionalism and said the team felt the need to explore a different direction in terms of roles and dynamics within the roster.

Two weeks that reshaped the roster

The sequence is short enough to set out in order. It begins with a signing made while NIP was still chasing a Major place and ends with one made after that chase was lost.

The first step mattered as much as the last. xKacpersky had joined NIP's main team in June 2025 on loan, replacing arrozdoce, and finished 2025 as the highest-rated player on the roster, according to HLTV's report of April 1. He is 19, began his career at Young Ninjas, the organization's academy team, and was ranked first in HLTV's Prospects report for January 2026, a list of young players the site considers the most promising. His average rating so far in 2026 was 1.20 at the time of that report; a rating is HLTV's single-number measure of a player's output, with 1.00 as the average.

Two days after that deal, HLTV wrote that other teams might take an interest in him in spite of it.

How the Cologne place was lost

Majors are the championships backed by Valve, the publisher of Counter-Strike 2. Teams are invited to them according to the Valve Regional Standings, or VRS, a ranking built from match results. For the IEM Cologne Major, the standings that counted were those of April 6.

NIP's last chance was Stake Ranked Episode 1, played in Barcelona. HLTV reported on April 3 that the team needed to finish in the top three there to keep its season alive, citing a specialist of the standings. NIP beat Gentle Mates on the first day, then lost to GamerLegion in a series where two maps ended 13-11, and then lost 2-0 to HEROIC in a best-of-three, a series won by the first team to take two maps. The first map of that series, Nuke, went to overtime and ended 16-14 for HEROIC.

The result left NIP nearly 50 points short of the top 17 of the European standings, the threshold it needed to reach, HLTV wrote. The team had also gone out early at BLAST Bounty, IEM Krakow and BLAST Rotterdam earlier in the season.

The same match pushed the two teams in opposite directions. HEROIC, ranked 16th by HLTV on March 30, came out of it with its own place in Cologne very likely, the site wrote. NIP, eight places lower on that list, came out of it with a season to rethink.

Head coach Xizt spoke to HLTV after the elimination. He said he had expected much more from the season and that close defeats had been its story. The team struggles in the decisive moments of tight rounds and tends to take unnecessary fights when it is ahead, he said, and three of its players have not spent much time at the top level. He added that the staff would step back, review the season and build a plan.

HLTV's own reading, in its report of April 3, pointed to one more factor: cairne, who had a 1.20 rating in 2025 at Inner Circle, his previous team, was at 1.03 in 2026. The site's ranking tells the same story from a distance. NIP was 24th on March 30 and 29th on April 13.

The line-up before and after

Three of the five players are untouched by April's changes, and the coach stays. The differences are in the status of one player and the identity of the sniper.

NIP now carries two benched players alongside its five. r1nkle had been with the team since April 2024. HLTV describes him as a flashy, aggressive sniper whose form declined over time; his rating in 2026 stood at 1.08 overall and 1.02 against teams ranked in the top 50, according to the site's figures of April 15.

A sniper's role for a player who shared it

The unusual part of the signing is the position. HLTV notes that stavn has until now been a hybrid or secondary sniper: a player who carries a rifle in most rounds and picks up the AWP when the situation calls for a second one. NIP is asking him to make it his main weapon.

For the team, that choice does two things at once. It fills the sniper's seat without adding another player short of top-level experience, the gap Xizt described on April 3. And it brings in someone the staff already knows. HLTV points out that stavn played alongside sjuush at HEROIC, where Xizt was also part of the project, and that he had shared an earlier HEROIC line-up with Snappi. Of the four teammates and one head coach he joins, three have worked with him before.

His record there is the reference HLTV uses. With HEROIC he won the BLAST Premier Spring and Fall events and finished runner-up at the IEM Rio Major, and he appeared in HLTV's ranking of the year's top 20 players four years in a row, with a best place of ninth in 2023. He moved to Astralis in November 2023 and averaged a 1.06 rating over 285 maps there, according to the site's January report.

There is also an unknown, and it is stated in HLTV's own numbers: the page shows no map played by stavn in the past three months. He stepped away from Astralis's line-up in August 2025, citing personal reasons, and said in January that he was ready to return to competition. NIP is giving a new role to a player coming back from eight months without a match.

What the standings ask of NIP now

With Cologne gone, the target moves to the next Major. HLTV writes that NIP are now looking ahead to the PGL Singapore Major, which is scheduled from November 24 to December 13, 2026, with 32 teams and a prize pool of US$1.25 million.

The calendar for getting there changed six days before the signing. HLTV reported on April 9 that PGL, the organizer, had set the invitation cut-off for Singapore at November 2, which is 22 days before the first match. PGL called it the shortest gap between a Major's cut-off and its start, HLTV reported, and earlier cut-offs had fallen about two months before the event.

From April 15 to November 2 there are 201 days. In that time NIP has to climb from a position that was nearly 50 points short in Europe at the last count, with a sniper learning the position as a first choice.

No date has been announced for the new five's first appearance, and NIP has not said what it intends for r1nkle or for ewjerkz, the other player on its bench.

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