On January 28, 2025, Counter-Strike 2 started Premier Season Two, the first new season since the game launched. Valve announced it four days earlier in a post called "Seasons Change". Everyone who had earned a CS Rating in Season One got a commemorative medal with their season statistics, ratings were recalibrated, Train replaced Vertigo in the Active Duty map pool, and the M4A4 and FAMAS got cheaper. The post also set out the rules for the Season Two Medal.
What changed, and when
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| Jan 24, 2025 | Valve announces Season Two in "Seasons Change" |
| Jan 27, 2025 | Season One ends and Premier matchmaking is temporarily disabled |
| Jan 28, 2025 | Season Two begins: Season One medals, rating recalibration, Train in, Vertigo out, M4A4 and FAMAS price cuts |
| Jan 29, 2025 | Season Two progress indicator switched on in the play menu |
| Feb 6, 2025 | Party rating-gap rules adjusted so most Season One parties can queue together again |
| May 13, 2025 | Season Two world and regional leaderboards populated |
| Jul 14, 2025 | Season Two ends |
Season One in short
Premier is CS2's ranked pick-ban mode: teams decide the map by picks and bans from the Active Duty pool, and results move your CS Rating, a visible number that places you on leaderboards. Season One began with the game itself on September 27, 2023, when the launch notes said "Season One of Premier has begun", and ran for 16 months. Our launch article covers how it started.
The map pool changed once during that time. In April 2024 Dust II replaced Overpass, as covered in our April 2024 article. On January 27, 2025, a short patch ended the season: "Premier Season One is now over, and Premier matchmaking has been temporarily disabled."
The Season One Medal
Every player who earned a CS Rating during Season One received a commemorative Premier Season One Medal. Its in-game description calls it "a commemorative Premier Medal awarded for your active participation in Premier Season One."
The medal is more than a badge. Clicking it in your inventory opens detailed Season Statistics. Valve's post mentions graphs of your CS Rating and playtime over the season and map-specific stats, which it suggested using "to find areas of improvement for Season Two".
Season One had the lowest bar. Any CS Rating was enough, while Seasons Two, Three and Four each required 25 wins, as explained below.
Recalibration and ten wins
Season Two opened after about a day of downtime, as Valve had announced. During it, every player's CS Rating was recalibrated based on their Season One performance. The new rating isn't shown straight away: you have to win 10 Premier matches in the new season to re-establish it.
Follow-up patches filled in the rest. On January 29 Valve switched on the Season Two progress indicator in the play menu. On February 6 it adjusted the logic that decides when players are too far apart in CS Rating to queue as a party, saying that "in most cases" players who partied together in Season One would be able to do so again in Season Two. The Season Two world and regional leaderboards were only populated on May 13, 2025, three and a half months into the season.
Train in, Vertigo out
The Active Duty pool for Season Two was Ancient, Anubis, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke and Train. Train had only returned to CS2 in November 2024, rebuilt with a new layout and look, as our Train article explains, so players had about 11 weeks with it before it counted in Premier. The Season Two notes removed a boost angle from Long Dog to Bombsite A and fixed lighting artefacts on double-sided materials.
Vertigo had been in Active Duty since CS:GO's March 2019 update, when it took Cache's place, and it was in CS2's pool from launch. Its A site had been rebuilt in May 2024 (Fire Sale article). Leaving Active Duty took it out of Premier, not out of the game. When Valve reorganised the Casual and Deathmatch map groups in May 2025, Vertigo was in Defusal Group Alpha alongside Dust II, Mirage and Inferno.
A cheaper M4A4 and a better FAMAS
Two Counter-Terrorist rifles changed:
| Weapon | Before | After | Other change |
|---|---|---|---|
| M4A4 | $3,000 | $2,900 | — |
| FAMAS | $2,050 | $1,950 | Improved accuracy |
It was the M4A4's second price cut in eight months, after the drop from $3,100 to $3,000 in May 2024. Valve's welcome post joked that the rifle was now "more... A4-dable". For the FAMAS, the announcement mentioned "improvements to its standing and crouching accuracy (along with a price cut)". Valve published no accuracy figures. The previous FAMAS price comes from the Counter-Strike Wiki, which lists $2,050 since a 2019 CS:GO update.
The same notes made three SMGs less accurate when crouching, the MP9, MP5-SD and MP7, and adjusted the scope dot on the AUG and SG 553 to be more usable at range. Follow-up patches fixed regressions in those scope graphics.
Other changes
- Radar: a new dynamic zoom option grows or shrinks the radar to include your teammates, the bomb and other detected elements. A February 3 patch made it snap to size when a new enemy or the C4 comes into view.
- Spectating: grenades in the spectator UI follow the weapon selection order, and a carried C4 shows brighter.
- Demos: incomplete demo files can now be played, whether copied from a live match or recovered after a server crash.
- Exploit fix: players could no longer use the R8 Revolver's secondary fire and then sell it back.
- Server logs: counter-strafe summaries are now in game server log data as well as console logs.
The Season Two Medal
Season Two ran "through the Austin Major", and Valve set the medal rules in advance. To earn a Premier Season Two Medal you needed:
- an account in good standing,
- 25 Premier match wins,
- an active CS Rating at the end of the season.
The medal's colour matches the highest CS Rating you reached during the season. Its bars count your wins, one for every 25, up to five, so the full set takes 125 wins. Valve didn't list the colours in its post. The Counter-Strike Wiki gives seven CS Rating colour bands:
| CS Rating | Colour |
|---|---|
| 1,000–4,999 | Grey |
| 5,000–9,999 | Light blue |
| 10,000–14,999 | Blue |
| 15,000–19,999 | Purple |
| 20,000–24,999 | Pink |
| 25,000–29,999 | Red |
| 30,000 and above | Yellow |
On July 2, 2025, after Team Vitality won the BLAST.tv Austin Major, Valve confirmed that Season Two would end on July 14, and repeated the 25-win and visible-rating requirements.
Where it stands now
The Season Two medal rules became the template. Valve used the same colour, bar and eligibility rules for Season Three in July 2025 and for Season Four in January 2026. Each season since has swapped one map: Overpass for Anubis in Season Three, Anubis for Train in Season Four, and Cache for Overpass in Season Five, so Train has left Active Duty again. Vertigo hasn't returned to the pool. Neither the M4A4 nor the FAMAS price has changed in Valve's notes since.
The next big update after Season Two was "Spring Forward" in March 2025, which brought the Fever Case and a Train 2025 Collection.
Sources
- Seasons Change — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Counter-Strike 2 Update (January 28, 2025) — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Season's Greetings — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Counter-Strike 2 Update (January 27, 2025) — Counter-Strike 2 news
- BLAST.tv Austin Major Champions — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Counter-Strike 2 patches/January 28, 2025 — Counter-Strike Wiki
- Premier — Counter-Strike Wiki
- FAMAS — Counter-Strike Wiki
