StatTrak and Souvenir are the two special qualities you will see on weapon skins in Counter-Strike 2. Both change how an item looks and what it is worth, but they have nothing else in common. StatTrak adds a kill counter, while Souvenir ties the item to a professional match, and a single item can never be both.
The short version
| StatTrak™ | Souvenir | |
|---|---|---|
| Label colour | Orange | Gold |
| What it adds | A counter of confirmed kills (MVPs on music kits) | Gold stickers tied to a Major match, and on some recent playoff souvenirs a highlight charm |
| Main source | Weapon cases | Major tournaments |
| Trade-ups | Only together with other StatTrak items | Allowed since May 2026, but the result is a normal item |
StatTrak: a counter that belongs to the owner
StatTrak arrived with the Arms Deal update in 2013. The inventory description says the item "tracks certain statistics when equipped by its owner", and on guns that means a small orange display of confirmed kills mounted on the weapon. StatTrak knives have the count etched into the blade, and StatTrak music kits count MVPs instead of kills.
A few rules shape what the counter is worth:
- It only counts the owner's kills. According to the Counter-Strike Wiki, if someone else picks up your StatTrak gun the display flashes between the count and an error message. Bot kills and team kills are not counted.
- It resets when the item changes hands. Trading an item, or even listing it on the Steam Community Market, resets the counter to zero. Players noticed this on the Steam forums as early as 2014, and current guides describe the same behaviour, so listing and then cancelling still wipes the count.
- You can move a count, within limits. Valve's support page explains that a StatTrak Swap Tool transfers kill counts between two StatTrak items of the same weapon, so an M4A1-S count can only go to another M4A1-S. Since November 2025, newly bought Swap Tools can't be traded or sold on the Market.
StatTrak comes from weapon cases. The Wiki notes that map and themed collections can't produce StatTrak items. The odds page published by Perfect World, Valve's partner in China, gives the chance of an eligible item rolling as StatTrak as 1:10, roughly one in ten. StatTrak items can also come out of trade-up contracts, as long as every input is StatTrak too. Since October 2025, five StatTrak Covert skins can be traded for a StatTrak knife, though not for gloves.
Souvenir: a piece of a specific match
Souvenir items commemorate a match at a Major. They carry gold stickers for that match, so their appeal depends heavily on which teams and players those stickers show. Souvenir packages drew their skins from map collections rather than cases, and map collection skins can't be StatTrak, so the two qualities never overlapped.
For most of Counter-Strike's history, Souvenirs came from Souvenir Packages tied to a chosen match. That has changed twice recently.
2025: highlight charms. For the BLAST.tv Austin Major, Valve introduced Souvenir Highlight Packages for playoff matches. Each contains a Souvenir weapon with a charm that plays a video highlight from the map you picked, viewable in your inventory, in Steam or while spectating.
2026: craft your own Souvenir. For IEM Cologne 2026, Valve added the Souvenir-O-Matic. You choose a weapon of normal or Souvenir quality from your inventory, pick a completed match and one player from it, and get the weapon back as a Souvenir with gold team, autograph and map stickers. The conversion is permanent, any existing stickers are removed first, and Valve says the price depends on demand for the chosen team and autograph stickers and on the rarity of the weapon. This means skins from cases can now become Souvenirs too, although Valve's FAQ only names normal and Souvenir quality weapons as eligible, not StatTrak ones.
The same May 2026 update let Souvenir items go into trade-up contracts alongside normal items. Their Souvenir attributes are stripped, and the contract returns a normal item one grade higher.
What this means when you trade
For StatTrak: don't pay for a kill count. It resets as soon as the item reaches you. What you are paying for is the StatTrak label itself, which is rarer than the normal version of the same skin.
For Souvenirs: the stickers are the item. Check which event, teams and player are on it, since the same skin can be worth very different amounts depending on the match. With crafted Souvenirs now in the game, look closely at the sticker set rather than assuming every Souvenir came from a package. And remember that putting a Souvenir into a trade-up throws its Souvenir status away.
For both: search and price the exact quality you want. On CS2Sell, the StatTrak and Souvenir filters on Buy separate them from normal copies of the same skin. The rarity tiers guide covers how case odds work, and the Souvenir packages guide goes deeper into Major souvenirs.
