Sources: Majors to expand to 32 teams from 2025, RMRs removed

A raft of changes is coming to Counter-Strike Majors and their qualifying process.

Counter-Strike 2 Majors are set to expand from 24 teams to 32 beginning from 2025, multiple sources have revealed to HLTV.

Furthermore, the qualifying process for the Major will also undergo a significant change. After serving as the final qualifying stage in the Major cycle for the past four years, Regional Major Ranking events will be removed, the sources added.

Although it isn't clear if this will be the only avenue, invitations to the Majors are instead expected to be largely based on Valve's team ranking, Valve Regional Standings (VRS), moving forward.

As a result of the expansion to 32 teams, the plan is for an extra Swiss stage to be added to the Majors in addition to the existing Opening and Elimination stages.

This also means that Majors will last longer, adding about four days on top of the previously announced 14 days to create space for the additional stage.

The first Major to be affected by these changes will be the BLAST.tv Austin Major, which was previously announced for June 9-22, 2025. The resulting expansion should not create a clash with any events currently announced, but it will put the starting day closer to StarLadder StarSeries S19 and Skyesports Masters 2025, which end on June 1.

Originally 16-team competitions starting from the first Valve-sponsored event at DreamHack Winter 2013, Counter-Strike Majors were expanded to 24 teams when the stage previously known as the Main Qualifier was added to the Major proper starting from ELEAGUE Major 2018. Outside of some seeding and naming differences, this will mark the first big change to the Major format since then.