CS2 weekly drops explained: the care package and drop pools

CS2 hands out free items once a week through the weekly care package, and the set of cases, terminals and collections it can draw from is called the drop pool. Valve changes that pool with updates, sometimes in the patch notes and sometimes silently, and every change affects which items keep getting new supply.

How the weekly care package works

You need Prime Status. Steam Support states that only Prime accounts earn XP and only Prime accounts are eligible for weekly care packages, so a free account never sees one.

The package appears after your first profile rank-up of the weekly cycle, which takes 5,000 XP. It shows four random rewards and you choose two of them. The options can include a case or terminal, weapon skins from the current drop collections, graffiti and sticker capsules. A package you don't claim before the weekly reset is lost.

The cycle resets on Tuesday evening, US time. If you only play now and then, make sure your first rank-up of the week happens before that point, because unearned weeks don't carry over.

What is in the active drop pool

The pool has two parts: containers and weapon collections.

Collections. Valve announces these changes in patch notes. On March 31, 2025 it added the Ascent, Boreal and Radiant collections to the care package list and removed Bank, Italy, Lake and the original Train collection. On January 21, 2026 it added Harlequin and Achroma and removed Safehouse, Dust 2, the 2018 Nuke Collection and the 2018 Inferno Collection. Skins from a removed collection stop arriving through drops, so what already exists is all there will be from that route.

Containers. Community trackers that log drops across many accounts list five containers in the pool as of October 2026:

Container	Type	How you open it
Dreams & Nightmares Case	Case	Needs a key
Revolution Case	Case	Needs a key
Kilowatt Case	Case	Needs a key
Sealed Genesis Terminal	Terminal	No key; you buy an offered item
Sealed Dead Hand Terminal	Terminal	No key; you buy an offered item

Valve doesn't publish the odds of each container appearing, and tracker estimates have shifted as terminals were added. The patch notes announce new terminals as weekly drops but don't always say which older case made room. When the Dead Hand Terminal arrived, players noticed the Recoil Case had gone from drops through tracking data, not through Valve.

Cases sold through the Armory, Valve's paid progression system, sit outside this pool. The Fever Case, for example, arrived in March 2025 as Armory content, not as a weekly drop.

Cases and terminals work differently

A case is the familiar loot box: you pay for a key, open it and get one random item from its collection, with a small chance of a knife or gloves.

A terminal, introduced with the Genesis Collection in September 2025, costs nothing to unseal. An in-game arms dealer then offers you one random item from the collection at a set price. You can accept and pay, or decline and see the next offer. Each terminal gives five chances; turn them all down and it's used up with nothing bought. Valve sets those prices, and they appear to vary with how popular the item is. A skin bought from a terminal can't be traded for a week.

The second terminal, the Dead Hand Terminal from March 11, 2026, added 17 community-made skins and 22 new gloves as its rare special items. That made it the first terminal with a gold-tier slot.

Three of the 22 gloves that came with the Dead Hand Collection in March 2026

If you don't want to open a terminal yourself, a sealed one is still an item you can keep, trade or sell on the Steam Market like a case.

What happened to the rare drop pool

For years, a small share of weekly drops came from a separate rare drop pool of older cases. That kept a slow trickle of new copies flowing into the market even after a case left the active rotation.

In December 2025, drop-tracking data showed those older cases had stopped appearing entirely. Esports site Hotspawn reported that no rare-pool cases had entered the game through weekly drops since the change, and that Valve hadn't said a word about it. As of October 2026 trackers still show no rare drops, so any case outside the active pool is effectively discontinued: its supply only shrinks as people open it.

Older cases like these no longer appear in weekly drops, according to community drop trackers

Because this was never announced, it could also be reversed without notice. Treat "rare drop pool" as a historical label unless tracking shows it working again.

Picking your two rewards

The best pick depends on the four items you're offered that week, so check each one's market value before you claim. A few practical points:

Cases in the active pool keep dropping week after week, so their supply is constantly topped up.
A skin offer isn't always the weaker choice. A good float or a popular finish can be worth more than a common case.
A terminal costs nothing to keep sealed, and you only spend money if you accept one of its offers.
Market value isn't the only measure. If you'd actually use a skin on offer, that can count for more than a small price difference.

If you'd rather turn weekly drops into balance than keep them, you can sell them on Sell. For what new containers and pool changes do to prices over time, see how new cases affect skin prices, and for where every collection comes from, collections vs cases.