On July 8, 2026, Valve started Premier Season Five. The update put Cache into the Active Duty map pool in place of Overpass, redesigned how C4 explosion damage works on every official defusal map, swapped out the community maps and rotated the Armory. Valve's announcement was titled "Season 5, Armory, and More".
What the update added
| Area | Change |
|---|---|
| Premier | Season Five begins; Cache in, Overpass out of Active Duty |
| Gameplay | C4 damage now travels as a precomputed shockwave; the health bar previews the damage |
| Maps | Boulder, Fachwerk and Shelter added to Competitive, Casual and Deathmatch; Debris and El Dorado added to Wingman |
| Maps removed | Warden, Stronghold, Alpine and Sanctum |
| Armory | Arabesque and Spy Tech weapon collections, Fruits & Vegetables and Auto Racing stickers; four older collections removed |
| Other | Cheaper scoreboard, finer sticker rotation, Source 2 engine update |
The new collections have their own article: Arabesque, Spy Tech and the two sticker sets. This one covers everything else.
Season Four ends, Season Five begins
Season Four had started on January 21, 2026 (see our Season Four article). It ended on July 6, when, according to the Counter-Strike Wiki's patch log, Premier matchmaking was switched off. HLTV had reported the July 6 end date in June. Premier stayed closed for two days until Season Five opened with the July 8 update.
The July 9 patch fixed one cosmetic leftover from the changeover: some season medals were missing their gold tint on one of the bars. Our Season Two article explains how season medals are earned.
Cache replaces Overpass
On June 22, after the IEM Cologne 2026 Major, HLTV reported that Valve had announced Cache would replace Overpass once Season Four ended. Valve's July 8 notes made it official.
Cache had been out of the pool since 2019, when Vertigo took its place. A rebuilt version came back to CS2 in April 2026 for Casual, Competitive, Deathmatch and Retakes, which our Cache return article covers. That gave players about ten weeks to learn it before it counted in Premier.
Overpass, by contrast, had a short stay. It had returned to Active Duty in July 2025 with Season Three, and HLTV noted that this stint lasted only a year. The pool after this update is Ancient, Anubis, Cache, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage and Nuke. Majors use the Active Duty pool, which is why our PGL Singapore 2026 article expects Cache there unless the pool changes again.
Cache kept getting fixes after the switch. Valve's notes list collision and gap fixes and a removed boost spot at Outside A on August 3, a wallbang fix on B site plus extra T spawns and a missing competitive CT spawn on September 9, and clipping fixes around the blue doors in Mid on September 22.
The bomb damage rework
This is the change that affects every round on defusal maps. Valve's notes say three things:
- The effective range and extent of C4 damage were redesigned on all official defusal-mode maps.
- Damage now comes from "precomputed simulation values, baked into the compiled map".
- The shockwave "rapidly expands from the center of the explosion instead of being applied instantly".
Before this, as Insider Gaming explained, bomb damage was a simple distance calculation that ignored walls, turns and other map features. Now the blast flows out from the bombsite through the map. Valve's post says that if you are too close "you're toast", but the shockwave weakens around corners and doesn't go through walls, so at a distance cover can save you. Because the wave takes a moment to travel, damage lands when it reaches you rather than at the instant of detonation.
You no longer have to guess, either. Your health bar flashes a preview of what you will have left after the blast. Dot Esports called this the most important part of the rework, since a player saving an AWP can now check whether it will survive.
Valve tuned the system in the following days:
- July 9: removed a map-wide minimum of one point of damage from the new explosions, fixed wrong damage near the edges of map areas, and gave the blast more force on dropped weapons.
- July 20: the health preview now appears "when the bomb becomes audible", and the explosion now interacts with smoke clouds and molotov or incendiary fire.
Community map rotation
The four community maps from January left all modes. Poseidon, the other January Wingman map, was not on the list and received an update in August. Five maps replaced them, all from the Steam Workshop:
| Map | Modes | Setting | Workshop authors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boulder | Competitive, Casual, Deathmatch | Defusal map around a Greek monastery on a rock formation | OrelStealth, Roald, morozov, MadsenFK |
| Fachwerk | Competitive, Casual, Deathmatch | Defusal map in a small German town of half-timbered houses | OrelStealth |
| Shelter | Competitive, Casual, Deathmatch | Hostage map in a suburban animal shelter, with dogs as the hostages | SmurftYours |
| Debris | Wingman | French town in Madagascar after a military plane crash | JimFK, HomeFries |
| El Dorado | Wingman | Ruins of the mythical city of gold | radu, flowlee |
Valve pulled in newer Workshop versions of these maps several times in July and August, starting on July 14.
Armory rotation
The Arabesque and Spy Tech weapon collections and the Fruits & Vegetables and Auto Racing sticker collections joined the Armory. They came from the community "Call to Arms" Valve announced in December 2025. Four older sets left:
- The Train 2025 and Sport & Field weapon collections.
- The Sugarface 2 and Elemental Craft sticker collections.
Items you already own from those sets are unaffected; they just can no longer be redeemed with credits. The Armory explainer has the full timeline of what has come and gone.
Other changes
- Scoreboard. Valve reduced the performance cost of showing it. HLTV noted it had previously cut a player's frame rate nearly in half.
- Buy Menu. Picking up dropped weapons through the Buy Menu no longer fails.
- Stickers. Rotation on the application screen now moves in half-degree steps.
- Visuals. Material blending, such as the dirt on the barrels in Inferno's Banana, no longer disappears up close.
- Maps. Clipping and pixel-gap fixes on Cache, Dust II (Outside Tunnel) and Inferno (Top of Mid).
- Engine and tools. The engine moved to the latest Source 2 code, map scripting gained new functions, and the Workshop's Custom Paint Job Extended paint type got new overlay options.
Where it stands now
Up to Valve's notes of October 8, 2026, the Active Duty pool has not changed again and Season Five is still running. The next big change to Premier came on September 22, when map bans gave way to picks; our Rush Hour article covers it. Every article in this series is collected under updates.
Sources
- Counter-Strike 2 Update (July 8, 2026) — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Season 5, Armory, and More — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Counter-Strike 2 patches/July 6, 2026 — Counter-Strike Wiki
- Cache replaces Overpass in Active Duty pool — HLTV.org
- Bomb explosion overhauled in new update — HLTV.org
- Counter-Strike 2 Update Brings Bomb Blast Radius Changes, New Skins, and More Maps — Insider Gaming
- CS2 Season 5 update patch notes — Dot Esports
- Shelter — Steam Workshop
