The year in photos: 2021

Counter-Strike's much-anticipated return to LAN in the second half of 2021 brought with it an abundance of memorable moments.

After over a year without offline events and nearly two years without crowds at events, Counter-Strike finally returned to its rightful home in 2021, on LAN. To celebrate some of these tournaments, including the two arena events of the year, PGL Major Stockholm and BLAST Premier Fall Final, we put together a selection with some of our photographers' best work.

The return to LAN kicked off with IEM Cologne in July, the last event before the player break, although HLTV was unable to attend the event due to ESL events being in a tight bubble to stop the threat of a Covid outbreak, which remained throughout the year. The second half of 2021 kicked off with the first-ever Academy League, put together by WePlay at their studio in Kyiv.

Around the world other events also started to get going, small and big, including Fragadelphia 15 in North America. Teams also traveled from other continents to play in Europe, be it online or LAN, with the likes of 00NATION and MIBR bootcamping in Warsaw, where they were photographed by Radoslaw "MAKKU" Makuch. One more team HLTV was able to capture at bootcamp was Movistar Riders during their Major preparation as they opened the doors of the Movistar eSports Center in Madrid for a feature story on becoming the first Spanish squad to qualify for Counter-Strike's top tournament.

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Then came the highlight of 2021, the PGL Major in Stockholm. It marked the return of crowd-filled arenas, and with $2 million on the line, it became the highest-paying Major to date. A lot of rookies and new rosters left their mark in Sweden, but primarily it was the NAVI show as they went on a record-breaking run, lifting the trophy without losing a single map throughout the event.

A second season of WePlay Academy league was played, and MOUZ NXT became back-to-back champions in Kyiv. Meanwhile, in Budapest, Gambit won their first LAN event with their current lineup at the V4 Future Sports Festival, and in Helsinki Boris "⁠magixx⁠" Vorobiev and Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev lifted the Red Bull Flick 2vs2 trophy in the latter's last event with the Spirit jersey, albeit a fun one.

BLAST took center stage at the end of the year for our photographers as they attended an event at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen for the Fall Final followed by the World Final at the tournament organizer's new studio, also in the Danish capital. Natus Vincere cemented their superiority at both events by winning the former while going on a lower bracket run in the latter to finish out the year, knocking out two teams that played their last event together as teams, Liquid and Vitality.