StarLadder Budapest Major to feature Best of 5 Grand Final

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 04/11/2025

The StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 will be the first Counter-Strike major to feature a Best of 5 (Bo5) Grand Final.

The decision was announced by StarLadder, in conjunction with Valve, who quickly shared the news, confirming that the change would apply to all following majors.

Counter-Strike shared on their social media, “Let’s end the season with a bang. Counter-Strike 2 Majors now feature best of 5 Grand Finals, beginning with the StarLadder Budapest Major.”

The change to Bo5 Grand Finals has been widely welcomed by the Counter-Strike community.

It was a long-standing gripe in the community that events like IEM Katowice or IEM Cologne featured Bo5 finals, yet Counter-Strike’s most prized trophy did not.

When Counter-Strike 2 was introduced, MR12 (max-rounds per half, 12) replaced MR15, significantly shortening the length of matches.

As a result, almost every significant tournament changed its Grand Finals to be Bo5 contests.

Effectively, this meant that the Counter-Strike major was the only big event without a Bo5 final.

As such, the news has been welcomed with open arms, but the community is demanding further change to the Counter-Strike major format.

Fans demand further Counter-Strike major format changes

Currently, majors start with three Swiss Stages, prior to the eight-team single-elimination playoff stage.

Those three Swiss Stages begin with Best of 1 contests for all non-elimination/promotion matches, meaning 0-0, 1-0, 0-1, and 1-1 contests are all Best of 1s.

Any match which gets a team to the next stage or ends in one team being eliminated is a Bo3.

Best of 1s have largely been removed from other tournaments for the same reason Bo5s were added.

They are no longer necessary to allow events to fit into a reasonable schedule because of MR12, and Bo1 results are far more random and prone to upsets than longer formats.

The perceived randomness of Bo1s has given them a bad reputation in the community, combined with the schedule that can put teams on the verge of elimination after two Bo1 losses on day 1 of the Swiss stage.

PGL’s 2025 Tier 1 events have exclusively functioned with Bo3 Swiss, adding only a day to the calendar in comparison to each major Swiss stage.

As such, the decision to add an extra stage to the major, starting in Austin, was also a contentious one, with many wishing Valve had used the extra days of the 2025 majors to run Bo3 on all matches, rather than expand the team list.

As a result, Counter-Strike majors still exist on a format island, clinging to another outdated hangover from Counter-Strike years gone by.

Yes, we finally have Bo5 Grand Finals, but it remains true that Counter-Strike’s most important event still has something every other major event has moved away from – Bo1s.

Darragh Harbinson, Senior Editor

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.

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