Vitality’s mezii has earned more in 2026 than every other British CS2 player combined

Chadley Kemp, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 10/09/2026

British Counter-Strike has produced plenty of recognisable names, but the prize-money leaderboard reveals just how large the gap really is between the UK’s biggest CS2 star and everyone else.

According to Esports Earnings data retrieved on September 9th, 2026, only 96 British players have recorded prize winnings in Counter-Strike 2. More impressively, Will ‘mezii’ Merriman sits so far ahead of that field that his 2026 earnings alone are greater than the combined all-time CS2 winnings of the other 95 players.

Editor’s note: This analysis covers recorded individual CS2 tournament prize awards only. It excludes CS:GO earnings, salaries, sponsorships, sticker revenue, and other income. Esports Earnings currently lists mezii at $1.332m in CS2 winnings, but my review of the total removes $220,000 from two suspected duplicate award pairs previously identified in an analysis of Britain’s esports millionaires. This leaves a reviewed CS2 total of $1.112m.

Who are Britain’s highest-earning CS2 players?

Undoubtedly, the clearest takeaway is not necessarily that mezii ranks first among British CS2 players – it’s the sheer scale of the difference.

After the duplicate adjustment, the 96 tracked British CS2 players have approximately $1.308m in combined winnings. mezii accounts for $1.112m of that total, or roughly 85%.

Cai ‘CYPHER’ Watson ranks second with $48,769, meaning mezii has earned almost 23 times as much CS2 prize money as his nearest British challenger. The other 95 players combined sit at just $195,752.82.

*Adjusted for $220,000 in suspected duplicate entries.

Mezii’s 2026 alone beats the rest of Britain’s CS2 history

However, the most striking comparison becomes clear when I isolate his 2026 earnings data.

Through September 9th, mezii has earned $207,375 from seven recorded CS2 tournaments this year. That is approximately $11,622 more than the other 95 British players have earned across their entire recorded CS2 careers combined.

Four tournament victories generated $180,000 of his 2026 total, including $80,000 from IEM Kraków, $45,000 from PGL Cluj-Napoca, $30,000 from BLAST Open Spring, and $25,000 from IEM Rio. Those wins alone account for almost 87% of his prize money this year.

Vitality’s dominance explains mezii’s massive earnings lead

The scale of mezii’s lead makes more sense when you look at where he has spent the past three years.

Mezii joined Team Vitality in November 2023 and won his first two events with the team, the BLAST Premier Fall Final and World Final, which awarded Vitality $200,000 and $500,000 in prize money, respectively. Vitality finished that year as HLTV’s No. 1 team.

Even a comparatively quiet 2024 produced an IEM Cologne title worth $400,000, before Vitality went on one of the most dominant runs in Counter-Strike history. They won nine trophies in 2025, including seven consecutive events and both the Austin and Budapest Majors, earning HLTV’s Team of the Year award and finishing the year ranked No. 1.

2026 Big Event winners so far: @Team__Spirit: 🏆🏆@TeamVitalityCS: 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆@natusvincere: 🏆🏆@FalconsEsport: 🏆@parivisiongg: 🏆

By the end of the year, will anyone close the gap to Vitality? 👀 pic.twitter.com/CSs8Fn53f7

— HLTV Awards (@HLTVawards) August 27, 2026

Those two Major victories alone carried $1 million in first-place prize money, while Vitality also collected a $1 million ESL Grand Slam bonus.

Vitality carried that momentum directly into 2026. The French titans won five consecutive tournaments early in the year, with their victory at IEM Rio making Vitality the first organisation to win two ESL Grand Slams and securing another $1 million bonus.

No more debate. Just greatness.

The first team in CS history to ever win 2 Grand Slams 🏆🏆

Presented by @skinclubmedia pic.twitter.com/u8EmdnvmIK

— Team Vitality CS (@TeamVitalityCS) April 20, 2026

Mezii has spent almost his entire CS2 career competing for a team expected to win the game’s richest events. His gigantic lead over every other British CS2 player is, thus, not the product of a single breakout payday, but of nearly three years embedded in CS2’s most successful trophy-winning machine.

AZUWU and Gizmy are the names moving fastest in 2026

The gap is enormous, but the data also shows signs of another British group beginning to gain ground.

Oscar ‘AZUWU’ Bell has earned $17,950 in 2026, taking his recorded CS2 career total to $29,496.69. In other words, almost 61% of his CS2 prize money has arrived this year alone.

Jack ‘Gizmy’ von Spreckelsen shows a similar trajectory. His $12,450 in 2026 represents almost 48% of his $26,047.89 career total.

Both players have also been reaching higher-profile international events.

At the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC), Britain had three CS2 representatives: mezii, AZUWU, and Gizmy. Mezii reached the 5th–8th-place bracket, while AZUWU and Gizmy finished 25th–32nd. CYPHER, meanwhile, remains second on the all-time CS2 leaderboard but has earned only $1,150 in 2026. Smooya has recorded $1,000 this year.

The contrast makes AZUWU and Gizmy the top candidates to reshape the British rankings if their current pace continues.

British esports has depth, but not many prize-money giants

This concentration fits a broader pattern we have already seen in UK esports.

My analysis of the UK’s performance at EWC 2026 revealed that 49 British players competed across 12 tournaments, with representation heavily concentrated among shooters. Counter-Strike itself had three British competitors, while Call of Duty, Warzone, Apex Legends, and Rainbow Six supplied some of the UK’s deepest player pools.

However, my earlier analysis of Britain’s esports millionaires found that only three of 5,810 tracked British players had surpassed $1m in total recorded tournament winnings. While it’s clear Britain has plenty of professional-level talent, comparatively few players have spent long periods on teams consistently winning the richest events.

Counter-Strike has historically illustrated that gap particularly well. For perspective, British players earned roughly $1.6m in CS:GO prize money, placing the UK well behind traditional powerhouses such as Denmark, Russia, the United States, Sweden, and Brazil. Mezii’s rise in CS2 has, therefore, been less a continuation of long-standing UK dominance and more an extraordinary individual breakthrough.

Not all prize money tells the same story

There is also an important difference between mezii’s earnings profile and some of Britain’s other biggest esports winners.

British Fortnite player Jaden ‘Wolfiez’ Ashman, for example, earned roughly 82% of his $1.37m career prize money from his second-place finish at the 2019 Fortnite World Cup Duo Finals. Mezii’s total has instead been built through repeated victories across multiple elite Counter-Strike events – and that distinction matters.

That being said, prize money is not a perfect measure of performance. It ignores salaries and sponsorships, and players competing at bigger events naturally have access to larger payouts. Even so, it is a useful way of showing which British players have converted top-level results into the most prize money.

Right now, the answer for CS2 is overwhelmingly mezii.

The more encouraging finding is that AZUWU and Gizmy are beginning to build meaningful totals of their own. If British Counter-Strike is going to become less dependent on a single superstar, 2026 may ultimately be remembered as the year the next group started to close the gap.

Data note: All prize-money figures are presented in USD ($), rather than GBP (£), to match how the underlying Esports Earnings data is reported. Esports Earnings had not attributed Vitality’s $1 million ESL Grand Slam VI prize to individual player records at the time of data retrieval, so it is not included in mezii’s 2026 earnings total.

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Chadley Kemp, Senior Editor

Chadley Kemp (preferably just "Chad") has nearly a decade of editorial experience spanning esports, gaming, crypto, and betting content, covering everything from Counter-Strike and VALORANT to League of Legends and Dota 2. Outside of esports, Chadley holds a Ph.D. in Physiology and has published research in several peer-reviewed scientific journals.

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