NaVi have announced via X that NaVi Junior’s Drin ‘makazze’ Shaqiri has been promoted to the main Counter-Strike roster. The remainder of the roster has now been put up for sale due to “limitations of the CS ecosystem” preventing the roster from progressing under the NaVi umbrella.
The move will bring an end to the NaVi roster that has been together as a five since the addition of Ihor ‘w0nderful’ Zhdanov in October of 2023. The roster won four major trophies last year, including the Copenhagen major trophy, but has not looked like contenders despite reaching the playoffs at the BLAST.tv Austin Major and IEM Katowice 2025.
It is not yet clear who makazze replaces in the active roster. The aggressive rifler mostly plays natural star positions, playing some of the same positions as Mihai ‘iM’ Ivan, but also shares some roles with Justinas ‘jL’ Lekavicius, who struggled for much of the year.
In the same statement, NaVi announced that they were open to offers for their academy team as a package and were intending to build a new NaVi Junior roster. The statement explicitly includes coach András ‘coolio’ Fercsák, despite the coach not having an effect on the Valve Regional Standings.
Why are NaVi letting go of NaVi Junior?
NaVi Junior were ranked number 28 globally in the latest VRS snapshot. Their high rank makes the roster eligible for certain tier one event invites and puts them in a strong position to qualify for the second major of the year, Starladder Budapest Major 2025. Yet, under their organisation’s umbrella, NaVi Junior effectively can do neither.
In their statement, NaVi characterise it as follows: “The limitations of the CS ecosystem do not allow the academy team to further develop under the NAVI tag, which is why we now accept offers to buy the NAVI Junior roster.”
Those limitations boil down to conflict-of-interest rules that tournament organisers include in their rulebooks, meaning that only one team from an organisation can play in a tournament.
As the academy team or senior team can be incentivised by organisational pressures to win or lose if the two teams play each other, the potentiality of the teams facing each other represents a competitive integrity issue, and therefore is not allowed.
The rules mean that a team effectively has a limit to progression in the senior team is ranked above, or equivalently, to the senior teams. As organisations will favour their senior roster, NaVi Junior were stuck playing tier two and three events, despite being the required ranking for invitations to some tier one events.
How much is the roster worth?
As the 19th-ranked team in Europe in the latest Valve Regional Standings, the core could be worth a lot to prospective organisations hoping to find a roster to quickly rise the ranks and qualify for the next major. Sticker money offered by a major is a major incentive for esports organisations to invest in a roster, and with NaVi Junior so close to that threshold, their VRS points are a valuable asset.
If they do, they will have to do it without their best performer of the year so far in makazze, but NaVi Junior’s remaining players are not that far behind, with Aulon ‘Krabeni’ Fazlija standing out despite his in-game-leading responsibilities.
Fans can now look forward to seeing the roster, albeit without makazze, playing tier one opposition. The roster has won several tier two tournaments this year alone, defeating senior rosters like Ninjas in Pyjamas, Ence, and Fnatic in the process.
NaVi Junior are now:
Dmytro ‘dem0n’ Myroshnychenko
Nikita ‘cmtry’ Samolotov
Džiugas ‘dziugss’ Steponavičius
Aulon ‘Krabeni’ Fazlija
András ‘coolio’ Fercsák (coach)
Darragh Harbinson is an esports writer specialising in Counter-Strike. He has written for Esports News UK, Esports Insider, UKCSGO, Dexerto, and Rush B Media.
