Valve's May standings set the invites for DraculaN 7 and XSE Pro League

Valve has released the May 2026 update of its Valve Regional Standings, the ranking the publisher of Counter-Strike 2 computes to decide which teams are invited to events. HLTV, the reference news site for the game, published the table on the evening of Monday, May 4. Team Vitality are first with 2081 points, and Natus Vincere second with 1885.

The Cologne Major is not at stake this time: its 32 invitations were fixed by the April update. The May list matters for what follows it. According to HLTV, the monthly ranking will dictate invites for two tournaments played during the summer break, Digital Crusade DraculaN Season 7 and XSE Pro League Season 26. Between them, the two events take 30 teams for their main events from the global list.

Valve Regional Standings of May 4, 2026, and the invitation details HLTV published with them the same day.

Two summer events drawing on one list

The standings are published as one global ranking and as three regional lists, for Europe, the Americas and Asia. Some organizers invite region by region, as the Major does. Both events tied to the May update use the global list instead, HLTV writes, which means the teams are read in a single order, whatever their region.

DraculaN Season 7, run by the organizer Digital Crusade, is set for June 23 to June 28 and fills 14 places in its main event from the May standings. HLTV notes that the organizer has recently expanded its prize pool, without giving a new amount. XSE Pro League Season 26 follows from June 29 to July 12 and fills 16 places in its main event the same way. HLTV describes it as a US$1,000,000 event.

The DraculaN series is not new to the ranking race. Its sixth season, which ended on April 2, was one of the last events before the cut-off for the Cologne invitations. M80, a team from the Americas, won it by beating Monte 2-1 in the grand final, and HLTV wrote that the run had done more than enough to secure the team a place in the first stage of the Major.

The April update had already been used beyond Cologne. HLTV listed two smaller events that took teams from it: LORGAR Rankings Season 1, played on April 25 and 26, and Stake Ranked Episode 2, scheduled for May 27 to May 30.

Vitality extend their lead

Vitality were first in April with 2063 points. They now hold 2081, a gain of 18. Natus Vincere, second in both updates, went the other way, from 1903 to 1885, so the gap between the two has grown from 160 points to 196.

The month between the two updates included IEM Rio, which Vitality won on April 19 by sweeping Spirit 3-0 in a best-of-five grand final, a series played to three won maps. HLTV reported that it was their fourth title of the season and that the winner's share was US$295,000. For Spirit, the final itself was a step: HLTV's headline of April 18 noted that it was their first grand final appearance since August.

Below the first two places, the order has been shuffled. Nine of the April top ten are still there, but only Vitality and Natus Vincere sit where they sat four weeks ago.

FUT, Spirit and Astralis move into the top six

FUT made the longest climb of the top ten. The team was 12th in April with 1619 points and is fourth in May with 1808, a gain of 189 points and eight places. In between, on April 11, it won PGL Bucharest, beating Astralis 3-1 in a best-of-five grand final: 13-5 on Ancient, 13-5 on Mirage, 14-16 after overtime on Nuke and 13-3 on Dust2. HLTV called it the team's first notable LAN trophy, meaning a tournament played in person, since it entered Counter-Strike nearly a year earlier. Its line-up in that final was dem0n, cmtry, dziugss, lauNX and Krabeni.

Astralis, the runners-up in Bucharest, rose too, from tenth with 1689 points to sixth with 1800, a gain of 111. Spirit, the runners-up in Rio, went from ninth with 1721 to fifth with 1807, a gain of 86. Falcons, third in Rio according to HLTV's report of April 19, moved from sixth to third, from 1769 to 1823.

The result is a very tight group behind the leaders. From Falcons in third to Astralis in sixth, four teams are separated by 23 points, and FUT stand a single point ahead of Spirit. The MongolZ, seventh with 1791, are nine points further back. They are now the only Asian team in the top 30.

Four teams of the April top seven lost places. PARIVISION went from third to eighth and FURIA from fourth to tenth, each losing 51 points. Aurora slipped from fifth to ninth, losing 35. MOUZ, seventh in April with 1769, are now 11th with 1730, level on points with FURIA, whom the table lists one line above them.

Further down: 3DMAX up, SINNERS down

Movement in the rest of the top 30 was just as wide. Among the teams of the April top 30 that stand outside the new top ten, 3DMAX made the biggest jump, from 24th with 1458 points to 15th with 1552, a gain of 94. GamerLegion rose from 17th to 13th and Legacy from 16th to 14th. FaZe, 26th in April and outside the Major, are 22nd with 1460, six points more than four weeks ago.

Others fell. SINNERS, the last European team invited to Cologne, dropped from 22nd with 1480 points to 30th with 1379, a loss of 101. 9z went from 13th to 19th, losing 95 points, and BIG from 18th to 23rd, losing 81. paiN, 14th in April, are 17th.

Two teams in this part of the table won events in April. SINNERS won LORGAR Rankings Season 1 on April 26, HLTV reported, the same weekend Monte beat HEROIC 3-1 in the final of the CCT Global Finals. Monte now stand 18th with 1529 points, ten fewer than in April, and HEROIC 20th with 1482, twenty fewer.

Three teams enter the top 30: MIBR in 27th place with 1402 points, Nemesis in 28th with 1394 and EYEBALLERS in 29th with 1383. Three leave it: TYLOO, NRG and K27, who stood 27th, 29th and 30th in April.

The regional balance has tilted further toward Europe. Of the first 30, 23 are European, six come from the Americas and one from Asia. In April the split was 22, six and two. In the top ten, eight teams are European, with one from the Americas, FURIA, and one from Asia, The MongolZ.

How the standings are calculated

Valve explains its method in the public repository where it posts the standings. The model ranks teams on a short list of factors: the prize money a team has earned, the prize money earned by the opponents it has beaten together with the number of teams those opponents have beaten, and head-to-head results. Valve's stated goals are standings that are accurate, not easily gamed and produced by a transparent process.

The table HLTV prints shows five columns of figures behind each total, under the headings BCOL, BOFF, NETW, LANW and H2H. For Vitality on May 4 they read 541, 564, 331, 564 and 82. Some figures recur across the table: five teams of the top ten, Vitality, Natus Vincere, FUT, PARIVISION and FURIA, carry the same 564 in the second column.

The last column, H2H for head-to-head, is where the top 30 differ most. Vitality's 82 is the highest of the list, followed by Monte's 69. At the other end, EYEBALLERS carry minus 148, 3DMAX minus 145 and FaZe minus 119. Among the top ten, Astralis have the lowest figure, minus 69, and Falcons, Spirit and Vitality are the only three with a positive one.

The calendar from here

The May table changes nothing for the first event of the summer. The 32 teams of the IEM Cologne Major, which runs from June 2 to June 21, were set by the April update. DraculaN Season 7 begins two days after the Major's last day, and the XSE event the day after DraculaN ends.

The next Major already has its date in the standings calendar. HLTV reported on April 9 that the PGL Major Singapore, played by 32 teams from November 24 to December 13 for US$1,250,000, will take its invitations from the standings of November 2, with team details due by November 6. That leaves 22 days between the cut-off and the start of the event, which HLTV describes as the shortest time between the cut-off and the start date of a Major. The organizer said the change ensures that the latest competitive results are reflected in the line-up.

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