Team ranking: February 2025

3-3-2025 19:51

Results from IEM Katowice, PGL Cluj-Napoca, and several online events caused shifts in the bottom half of the ranking.

February marked the first full month of the new Counter-Strike circuit and the conclusion of IEM Katowice and PGL Cluj-Napoca, where Vitality and MOUZ claimed their first trophies of the year.

A few local LANs also played out, including Elisa Open Finland Season 8 Finals, Fragadelphia Block, and Maxim "⁠kyousuke⁠" Lukin's offline HLTV tournament debut at BetBoom LanDaLan, while European Pro League, ESL Challenger League, several CCT series, and qualifiers for ESL, BLAST, and PGL events took place online.

For new readers or those in need of a refresher, here's a summary of how the HLTV World Ranking works:

Our team ranking is based on teams' achievements over the past year (with severe decay in points throughout each month), recent form over the last two months, and performance in recent events in the last three months.

Each team is required to have a three-man core in order to retain their points. Online matches and tournaments are included, but with a diminishing factor which means they cannot make a big difference among the top teams, and mainly serve to put new teams on the map.

Below is the current top 30 table as of Monday, March 3, which goes more in-depth into how the points are distributed — or you can check our special page, where you will be able to find the latest, weekly version of our ranking. You can see the lineup for each team by hovering over their name in the table.

Counter-Strike World ranking on March 3rd, 2025

RANK

TEAM

ACHV

FORM

LAN

TOTAL
POINTS

+/-

Spirit

500

200

300

1000

Vitality

329

167

663

Natus Vincere

357

119

111

587

Eternal Fire

232

185

120

537

268

106

434

-3

FaZe

199

109

120

428

-1

The MongolZ

188

109

110

407

MOUZ

187

363

-1

Falcons

108

104

276

10.

Virtus.pro

107

258

11.

Astralis

102

117

255

12.

Liquid

211

-3

13.

paiN

206

-1

14.

GamerLegion

101

194

15.

FURIA

159

-5

16.

3DMAX

153

-1

17.

HEROIC

119

18.

BIG

113

19.

MIBR

103

-3

20.

BetBoom

-1

21.

SAW

22.

Wildcard

-2

23.

M80

24.

FlyQuest

-2

25.

TYLOO

+31

26.

27.

Complexity

-4

28.

500

+17

29.

Imperial

-2

30.

PARIVISION

+12

Vitality climbs to second

Vitality were nearly 600 points shy of Spirit's top placing at the start of February, but winning IEM Katowice has almost cut that gap in half.

The French organization broke their curse in Poland and stormed to its first trophy with Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool, going undefeated in the group stage with wins over 3DMAX, FaZe, and Virtus.pro before confidently surpassing The MongolZ and Spirit in the Spodek.

Vitality dropped just one map to FaZe in that run for a confident bounce back into the season after losing to Eternal Fire at BLAST Bounty Season 1 Finals, and the fashion in which they dismantled Spirit in the Katowice final should have the Shanghai Major champions worried looking forward to the rest of the year.

Cluj-Napoca attendees gain ground

Falcons finished PGL Cluj-Napoca as the runners-up after a 3-1 run through the Swiss group stage and wins over Eternal Fire and FaZe in the playoffs, the benefit of Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač's addition starting to bare fruit.

MOUZ got to lift the trophy in Romania and climbed one spot on the Monday that followed, but are still recovering from losing 20% of their points after removing Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek from their lineup.

Instead, Eternal Fire, The MongolZ, and Astralis all made slight gains, with the Danes going up two spots after beating Garidmagnai "⁠bLitz⁠" Byambasuren's side in playoffs and FaZe in the third-place decider.

TYLOO, 500, PARIVISION surge

Three teams made significant strides in the last month, but none more so than TYLOO.

The Chinese team climbed 31 spots from February 3 to March 3, thanks largely to their excellent start at ESL Pro League Season 21 Stage 1 which contributed to a strong form subranking and made up for some shaky results online in Asia.

Yi "⁠JamYoung⁠" Yang led the way in upset victories over 3DMAX and Eternal Fire in Sweden to put TYLOO ahead 2-0 in the Swiss group stage, with the team stopped short of advancing straight to Stage 2 by GamerLegion.

500 and PARIVISION, meanwhile, shot up the standings thanks to strong and sustained online performances.

Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali's side beat Nemiga, B8, GamerLegion and HEROIC in the BLAST Open Lisbon qualifier before losing to Astralis in the final, while 500 claimed victory in CCT Season 2 Europe Series 17 and have victories over B8, 9 Pandas, and BIG bolstering their recent form.

EF! most likely to drop after the upcoming tournaments, but LET'S GO EF!

2025-03-03 19:52

9 replies

Probably they'll win epl

2025-03-03 19:55

8 replies

At this point, they have to win something..

2025-03-03 20:01

7 replies

I was expecting them to win PGL Cluj actually

2025-03-03 20:05

5 replies

meds it's called eternal flke for a reason

2025-03-03 20:13

3 replies

I just love seeing more teams stepping up and actually competing with the big dogs like Vitality, Spirit, and NAVI. It makes the scene so much more exciting! Also gotta give props to teams like paiN, GamerLegion, and Mongolz—they’re bringing the heat and keeping things unpredictable. That’s exactly what we need to make CS even more fun—more teams shaking things up instead of the same few dominating all the time!

2025-03-03 20:28

2 replies

there was no team from top 5 in romania, they had to play against top 6-50 and got 6th place. "but they are tired"

2025-03-03 20:36

1 reply

I saw Maj3r saying that this is their first time breaking into the Top 5, and they’re grinding hard, trying to participate in every event and do their best. I respect that hustle. At the end of the day, they’ll either keep improving or eventually fall off—that’s just how it goes. But one of my expectations is that if EF can win a tournament in the next few months, they can establish themselves as a solid Top 10 team. Right now, their biggest issue is consistency, and until they fix that, they’ll always be on the edge of greatness rather than fully there.

2025-03-03 20:46

It was one of the easiest tournaments for EF to win, but somehow they choked I was 99% sure that they would win it.

2025-03-03 20:15

the reason they havent won anything yet is because they are tired. maj3r said it himself they are burnt out from success making too many playoffs will do that to ya

2025-03-03 23:33

Thai Lu being in the top30 is awesome considering they have JamYoung it's been too long

2025-03-03 19:53

ef tier 1

spirit shouldn't be at 1000 anymore after skipping cluj

2025-03-03 20:14

Are achievements, form and LAN explained anywhere? @Nohte

2025-03-03 20:33

hltv.org/ranking/teams/2025/march/3 Bottom of the page, 'How is the ranking calculated?'

2025-03-03 20:55

Jame getting Pari in top 30 in a few weeks is some crazy work hopefully they can start qualifying to some bigger tournaments

2025-03-03 21:02

HLTV ranking actually makes sense. When you look at the VRS, it's atrocious. The rankings are all over the place & mean nothing. The VRS is the worst ranking system ever created. Extremely cooked.

2025-03-03 21:40

They place too much weight on the prizepool and not enough on the caliber of opponent you are beating. But in the end they are mostly a tool to decide who gets into the major, where being in the top 8 is more important than which place there you are. In that regard, they are not that bad.

2025-03-04 01:13

Also don't you get punished with having a high rank because of Valves seeding rules? Like the #1 plays against the #9 instead of #16 and stuff` like that?

2025-03-04 02:13