Spirit overtake Falcons as HLTV's top-ranked Counter-Strike team

Team Spirit are the first-ranked Counter-Strike 2 team in the world on HLTV's list. The news site's world ranking of Monday, August 24, 2026 puts them first with 998 points, up one place. Team Falcons, first on the three previous lists of August, drop to second with 754.

The order was the other way round a week earlier. On August 17, Falcons were first with 812 points and Spirit second with 731. Between the two Mondays, Spirit won the Counter-Strike 2 tournament of the Esports World Cup in Paris, beating FUT 3-1 in the grand final on Sunday, August 23.

HLTV world rankings of August 24 and August 17, 2026.

Four Mondays in August

HLTV describes its list as a ranking of the 30 best Counter-Strike teams in the world, based on their recent performance, and publishes it every Monday. Each list keeps its own dated page, so the path of two teams can be followed week by week. For the first three Mondays of August, the top two did not change. The gap between them did.

On August 3, Falcons led with 912 points to Spirit's 793, a margin of 119. A week later it had grown to 155, with Falcons on 907 and Spirit on 752. By August 17 both totals had fallen and the margin stood at 81 points.

The last week reversed the picture. Spirit added 267 points between August 17 and August 24, while Falcons lost 58. A deficit of 81 points became a lead of 244. Over the whole month, Falcons have given up 158 points from their total of August 3, and Spirit have added 205.

Falcons had taken first place on the list of June 29, from Team Vitality, eight days after winning the IEM Cologne Major. That week they had 883 points to Vitality's 823, and Spirit were third with 716.

The final in Paris

The Esports World Cup is a multi-game event that its organizer, the Esports Foundation, moved from Riyadh to Paris in May. Its Counter-Strike 2 tournament brought 32 teams together from August 12, for a prize pool of US$2 million, up from US$1.25 million a year earlier, HLTV reported in its preview of August 10. Twenty-seven teams were invited through Valve's ranking, one qualified through another competition and four came through an open qualifier: BIG, K27, JiJieHao and 100 Thieves.

The main event opened with four groups of eight teams, played in double elimination, a format in which a team is knocked out only after a second defeat. Group matches began with a single map and moved to best-of-three series, won by the first team to take two maps. Sixteen teams reached the playoffs. The rest of the event was played at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, but the last day, with the grand final, was moved to the Accor Arena after tickets for the final at the Expo sold out, HLTV reported on July 28.

Spirit won that final 3-1 against FUT in a best-of-five, a series played to three won maps, HLTV reported on the evening of August 23. The winners' share is US$600,000 and 1,000 points in the Club Championship, the ranking of the Esports World Cup that adds up every club's results across all its games. FUT, as runners-up, receive US$340,000 and 750 points.

donk finished the final with a 1.38 rating, HLTV's own measure of a player's output, and 88 kills to 70 deaths over the series. The five who played it are sh1ro, magixx, tN1R, zont1x and donk, with hally as coach. HLTV noted that the title is Spirit's second of the year, after PGL Astana, where they beat Falcons 3-0 in the final on May 17.

Their route included a team they had struggled against. Spirit beat Vitality in the quarterfinals, ending a run of six straight defeats against them, according to HLTV. FUT came through MOUZ and FURIA in the playoffs to reach what HLTV called their first grand final at a Big Event, its term for the top tier of tournaments.

Spirit's season before Paris

Spirit had reached two finals earlier in the year. In April they reached the final of IEM Rio, their first grand final since August of the previous year according to HLTV, and lost it 3-0 to Vitality on April 19.

A month later came the first title of their year, in Astana, with the 3-0 final win over Falcons. In Cologne, Spirit went out in the semifinal, 2-1 against Falcons, and were third on HLTV's list of June 29. By the first Monday of August they were second, the place they held for three weeks before the Paris final.

The roster on the August 24 list is the five who played the final.

The places behind the top two

FURIA and Vitality hold third and fourth on both lists, and MOUZ stay fifth. Behind them, the order of the second half of the top ten has been shuffled.

FUT made the largest climb in places of the week. They were 14th with 256 points on August 17 and are sixth with 499, a gain of 243 points and eight places. Their line-up on the list is xfl0ud, dem0n, Krabeni, cmtry and dziugss. Their first notable title on LAN, a tournament played in person, came at PGL Bucharest in April, where they beat Astralis 3-1 in the final, HLTV reported on April 11. In the Paris final, dem0n posted a 1.21 rating. Legacy rose five places, from 12th to seventh, and added 146 points.

Besides Falcons, four teams of the August 17 top ten lose places. Natus Vincere fall from sixth to eighth and lose 104 points. FaZe go from seventh to tenth. Aurora, eighth on August 17, and 9z, ninth, are now 11th and 12th, with Aurora one point behind FaZe.

Of the first five on August 17, only Spirit gained points in the week. Falcons lost 58, MOUZ 56, Vitality 55 and FURIA four. Of the 29 teams that appear on both lists, six gained: Spirit, FUT, Legacy, G2 with 25 more, GamerLegion with 36 more and magic with one. The other 23 lost points, among them Astralis, down from 305 to 275, and The MongolZ, from 276 to 239. Inner Circle, 28th on August 17, leave the top 30.

Further down, GamerLegion climb seven places to 18th, and JiJieHao, one of the four teams that came through the open qualifier in Paris, enter at 28th, five places up.

Two rankings with two different jobs

First place in HLTV's list is a matter of standing. It does not decide who plays where.

Spirit already led the other list. In Valve's standings of August 3, reported by HLTV the next day, they were first with 2011 points, ahead of Falcons with 1950 and MOUZ with 1873. Vitality were fifth there with 1836, their first position outside the top four since August 2024, according to HLTV. The two scales are not comparable: Spirit's 998 points on one list and 2011 on the other measure different things.

Valve explains in its public repository that its model ranks teams on the prize money they have earned, on the prize money of the opponents they have beaten and how many teams those opponents have beaten, and on head-to-head results. HLTV's ranking is its own, with its own points.

What the next months hold

The next Major will be decided on Valve's list. PGL, the organizer of the PGL Major Singapore, has set the cut-off for its invitations at the Valve standings of November 2, HLTV reported on April 9. The event runs from November 24 to December 13, with 32 teams and a prize pool of US$1,250,000.

The results in Paris also count on that list. HLTV's preview of August 10 noted that even the third-place decider carried points in Valve's standings as well as prize money. Before the Major, the August update of those standings already sends invitations to six tournaments played from early September to early November, HLTV reported on August 4.

On HLTV's list, the 244 points between Spirit and Falcons are the widest gap between first and second of the four Mondays of August.

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