Active Duty map pool history: every map in and out from 2013 to 2026

Active Duty is Valve's name for the seven maps used in Premier and professional Counter-Strike, the pool every team has to prepare. Its line-up has changed twelve times since Valve created it in July 2014, usually one map at a time. Here is every change, from the five-map pool of the first Major to the July 2026 return of Cache.

Before Active Duty: five maps (2013 to 2014)

When CS:GO launched in 2012, HLTV notes, its competitive play centred on four remade classics: Dust II, Inferno, Nuke and Train. Mirage joined in June 2013. The first Valve-sponsored Major, DreamHack Winter in November 2013, used those five, and so did EMS One Katowice in March 2014.

Cobblestone and Overpass were added to the game at the end of 2013, but Valve held them back to collect balancing data before using them competitively. Cache, a community map, had been in the game since mid-2013.

July 2014: Operation Breakout creates the group

Valve's release notes for Operation Breakout, on July 1, 2014, split the maps into three groups: Active Duty, Reserves and Operation. "These map assignments will be re-evaluated every Operation," the notes said. Active Duty got seven maps: Dust II, Nuke, Mirage, Inferno, Cobblestone, Overpass and Cache. Train went to Reserves.

HLTV called it the most impactful change to the competitive pool up to that point. It came only a month before ESL One Cologne 2014, so teams had little time to learn three new maps, and seven maps meant a new veto system. Cache was also the first community-made map to reach the competitive pool.

Every change since

2015 to 2018: out for a rebuild, back in new

For four years, most changes followed one pattern. A map left Active Duty to be remade, then came back as a new version and pushed out another.

• Train returned on March 31, 2015, the day Operation Vanguard ended, in a full remake that Hotspawn calls arguably the definitive version. Nuke went to the Reserve pool in its place.
• Nuke came back in April 2016 in a modernised version first released with Operation Wildfire, and Inferno left to be rebuilt.
• Inferno returned rebuilt in February 2017, five months before the PGL Kraków Major, replacing Dust II.
• Dust II came back remade in April 2018, replacing Cobblestone. HLTV notes that Cobblestone had been Astralis' permanent ban, and its removal helped the Danish team's run of dominance.

2019 to 2022: new maps instead of remakes

Vertigo, in the game since 2012, entered Active Duty in March 2019, 25 days after IEM Katowice ended, and Cache left after nearly five years. A remake of Cache by its creator FMPONE followed later in 2019, but it didn't return to the pool in the CS:GO era.

Then nothing changed for more than two years. Hotspawn calls the gap between March 2019 and May 2021, when Ancient replaced Train, the longest in the pool's history. In November 2022, after IEM Rio, Anubis replaced Dust II. HLTV notes that it was only the second community map to reach Active Duty, after Cache, and that it had won a community mapping contest in 2019.

CS2: one swap per Premier season

CS2 launched in September 2023 with the same seven maps CS:GO had finished with, although Inferno and Overpass had been rebuilt for Source 2. The first CS2-era change, in April 2024, brought Dust II back for Overpass, as our April 2024 update article covers.

From 2025, changes lined up with Premier seasons, which start in January and July. Valve announces each swap shortly before a season ends, and tournament organisers then switch their pools. HLTV described the January 2026 change as part of a "trend of start-of-season map pool changes".

• January 2025: a rebuilt Train replaced Vertigo.
• July 2025: Overpass returned after 15 months away, replacing Anubis.
• January 2026: Anubis came back after six months, with layout changes, and Train left after a year.
• July 2026: Cache returned after seven years out, replacing Overpass. It had come back to the game in April 2026 after Valve acquired FMPONE's remake.

Our CS2 update history links each of these updates. The Premier Season Five article covers the latest swap in detail.

The constants

Mirage is the map that has never left. HLTV notes it was the only map present at all 19 CS:GO Majors, and it is still in the pool in October 2026. Inferno, Nuke and Dust II have each spent spells out. Cobblestone, gone since April 2018, has been away longest, and Vertigo hasn't returned since January 2025. If you collect map items, Major Souvenir packages largely follow the pool of their time, as our Souvenir packages guide explains.

Sources

• Release Notes for 7/1/2014 — Counter-Strike blog
• Release Notes for 3/31/2015 — Counter-Strike blog
• The history of CS:GO's competitive map pool — HLTV.org
• Complete Competitive Counter-Strike Map Pool History — Hotspawn
• Counter-Strike 2 patches/July 15, 2025 — Counter-Strike Wiki
• Anubis replaces Train in Active Duty pool — HLTV.org
• Cache replaces Overpass in Active Duty pool — HLTV.org
• Active Duty Group — Counter-Strike Wiki