StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 one of the most watched CS2 events ever

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 15/12/2025

The StarLadder Budapest Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) Major 2025 brought in a peak audience of over 1.5 million viewers.

According to Esports Charts, a peak audience of 1,587,389 watched Team Vitality become StarLadder Budapest 2025 champions.

They defeated FaZe Clan 3-1 in the final to collect their ninth Major win of 2025.

This viewership was an 8% decrease from the 1.78m viewers that watched the previous BLATS Austin CS2 Major.

However, Budapest 2025 already became StarLadder’s most-watched event ever when over 970k watched Team Falcons eliminate G2 Esports.

The organiser’s previous best was a little over 836k from the StarLadder Berlin Major back in 2019.

StarLadder will now be preparing for its next event, StarLadder StarSeries Season 20, taking place in September 2026.

The tournament organiser was supposed to host an event next Spring, but it was cancelled due to clashing with IEM Cologne.

And the peak viewership from the Vitality vs FaZe final makes StarLadder Budapest the fifth most-watched CS esports event ever.

Only BLAST Austin (1.78m), PGL Copenhagen 2024 (1.85m), PGL Antwerp 2022 (2.11m) and PGL Stockholm 2021 (2.74m) have attracted bigger peaks.

Tournament runners-up FaZe were the most-watched team of StarLadder Budapest 2025.

The North American organisation made an incredible run through the tournament, narrowly avoiding elimination in Stage 1 before making it all the way to the final.

Meanwhile, of the five most-watched matches at StarLadder Budapest, Team Vitality feature twice.

Once for the final and once versus Team Spirit as 1.3m tuned in to watch Mathieu ‘ZywOo‘ Herbaut face Danil ‘donk’ Kryshkovets

With Team Vitality’s incredible results in 2025, many feel that ZywOo was robbed of the Esports Athlete of the Year award at the Game Awards 2025.

Team Vitality’s historic CS2 2025 season

Team Vitality’s incredible year saw the organisation win nine CS2 titles in 2025.

The team dominated the first half of 2025, winning seven series, 30 matches, and 37 series in a row.

However, StarLadder Budapest was the only event in the second half of the year that Vitality won.

This recent trophy makes Team Vitality the first team to successfully defend a Major title since Astralis in 2019.

Vitality’s spectacular year has seen them compared to that legendary Astralis CS team.

And Vitality’s British superstar William ‘mezii’ Merriman admitted Vitality’s season might have topped Astralis.

Either way, this Vitality roster will be remembered for a ridiculous season.

Especially now that they’ve recovered from their dip in form to collect yet another trophy.

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

In my seven years of esports writing, I've introduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I'm most proud of the latter.

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