How does Vitality's season compare to prime Astralis?

We put Vitality's 2025 run against Astralis’ legendary prime in terms of trophies, maps, opponents, and impact.

In the first half of 2025, Vitality delivered one of the most dominant seasons in Counter-Strike history. They claimed seven consecutive Big Event victories, including a Major title in Austin, and maintained an astonishing 30-match LAN win streak stretching over five months.

The addition of Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool revitalized a roster that wasn't a "real team" during 2024 and reached heights previously thought were impossible due to the ultra-competitive nature of the current circuit and the move to MR12, which gives teams less margin for error. Above all that, Vitality rekindled a debate as old as Counter-Strike itself: what is the best season in history?

In this article, we will take a closer look at that question by comparing Vitality's 2025 campaign with Astralis' legendary run in the second half of 2018, which many still view as the gold standard in different aspects such as trophy count, win streaks, map pool, and many more.

Let's start with the most straight-forward one to compare — trophies. Vitality attended eight LAN events in the first half of 2025 and won an incredible seven of them, only failing to secure gold in the season opener at BLAST Bounty.

They then won IEM Katowice, EPL S21, BLAST Open Lisbon, IEM Melbourne, BLAST Rivals, IEM Dallas, and finally the BLAST.tv Austin Major to put a bow on an already spectacular season, giving them an 87.5% LAN event win rate.

Astralis, on the other hand, also attended eight tournaments, but won just six. They began their season with a second place at DreamHack Masters Stockholm before winning the FACEIT Major and BLAST Pro Series Istanbul, but followed that up with a third-place finish at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen.

The Danes then went on a win spree and took home first place at IEM Chicago, ECS S6 Finals, EPL S8 Finals, and BLAST Pro Series Lisbon, but even a 75% LAN event win rate wasn't enough to win out this category against the imperious Vitality.

Both teams also won the Grand Slam during their season. Astralis did so after their EPL S8 triumph, while Vitality won the revamped, and harder to win, ESL Grand Slam in Melbourne.

When we come to win streaks, Vitality stand out with their 30 games in a row across a four-month period that only ended in a best-of-one against Legacy at the Austin Major, a tournament they dominated despite that hiccup.

That streak becomes even more impressive when we add the fact that Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire's troops are currently on a 34-series win streak in best-of-threes and best-of-fives, which has the chance to go even further after the summer break and already puts them at the top of the all-time list.

Conversely, Astralis racked up 14 wins in a row across the second part of 2018, eight of which came in a best-of-three format. This comes in part due to the higher frequencies of best-of-ones during that time period and occasional hiccups even in the middle of their era.

Vitality's map pool, which served as a springboard for their consistency, also serves up some breathtaking numbers. Outside of their permaban of Ancient, their worst map across 2025 was Anubis (66.7% win rate), with Mirage (68.4%) not far ahead.

After those maps, however, the numbers get even crazier, as Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut and company recorded a +80% win rate on all other maps. Nuke (83.3%), Inferno (85.7%), and Train and Dust2 (88.9%) have all proved a happy hunting ground for the squad, whose longest win streak came on Inferno (13).

All of that gives them an overall record of 76-18, or an 80.8% win rate overall.

Astralis' map pool was also impressive, albeit slightly more top-heavy. Their permaban was Cache, even though they successfully picked it against Natus Vincere once, with their three next best maps being Overpass (54.5% win-rate), Train (57.5%), and Mirage (60%).

Next comes the trifecta of their era — Inferno (86.2 %), where they recorded a ten-game win streak, Dust2 (90%), and Nuke (100%), where they won 12 in a row. Their overall record was thus 66-19, or a 77.6% win rate.

Next we will look at their records against their three closest challengers throughout their respective seasons. For Vitality, those three teams were Falcons, MOUZ, and Spirit, and apEX's squad didn't lose a single series against any of them.

They beat MOUZ seven times, Falcons four, and Spirit three with a combined map record of 34-10, one that becomes 15-6 in their six grand-final bouts against the aforementioned trio.

Astralis' closest challengers were Natus Vincere, FaZe, and Liquid, and the Danes lost a solitary game against each. Natus Vincere beat them in a best-of-one at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen, FaZe did so in a group-stage seeding game at IEM Chicago, while Liquid got the better of the Danes in a best-of-one clash at the FACEIT Major.

That puts their overall record at 11-3, with the map count standing at 20-6 across the season.

The worst records for the team came against their bogey lineups, namely Eternal Fire for Vitality and North for Astralis. The latter still went the way of Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander's men across the season, however, while the Eternal Fire match proved to be a one-off.

Last but not least, we can take a look at how the pros viewed coming up against both squads. For the Vitality side, Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin and Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás were the most expressive after finding themselves on the wrong side of the series seven times across the season.

"There are going to be some rounds where ropz or ZywOo is just going to make a really insane round that feels impossible to lose," Brollan told HLTV at BLAST Rivals.

Meanwhile, torzsi was in a mischievous mood even after another tough loss to Vitality in the Major semi-final. "I'm really proud of what we achieved here, and how we're progressing, but yeah, we just need to get rid of Vitality [laughs]", he said after the semi-final exit.

"They're a better lineup, better players, and we need something. Basically, they've lost zero best-of-threes; other teams couldn't beat them. If we wanted to beat them, we needed to have something," Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy joined the Vitality platitudes after Natus Vincere were sent home from Austin.

Astralis had a similar reputation of an indomitable team, with ropz, who played for MOUZ at the time, admitting that teams are not finding ways to get the better of the Danes.

"If we're going into matches like this one against Astralis, I mean one day, we know we'll for sure beat them, it's not going to stay like this forever. We're just kind of like hoping that... something clicks," he said.

"We had to beat the big boss before we can say anything and now we beat them, so it feels good," Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard said about finally getting the better of Astralis at IEM Chicago. "Every time we played them before we'd get hit with 200 grenade damage every round, and I feel like now we're starting to understand how they play, we're learning and developing," he added. Still, it would be quite some time before teams figured out the real counter to their playstyle.

His then-teammate Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač was also fueled by the eagerness to knock the Danes off their perch. "The biggest goal for next year is just to knock Astralis off the top, that is my biggest motivation," he told HLTV. "I am too tired of watching them win everything this year."

Both Vitality and Astralis have earned their place among the all-time greats in Counter-Strike history. The Danes defined an era with their methodical, utility-heavy style that set new standards for what a championship team looked like. Vitality, on the other hand, stormed through 2025 and won nearly everything in sight with a consistency that's not supposed to exist in CS2.

When comparing their peak seasons side by side, most measurable metrics, such as event wins, series win streaks, map win rates, tilt in Vitality’s favor, even though comparing teams in different eras is always hard.

Yet history has a way of appreciating things in hindsight. We may be witnessing something better than the Astralis era in real time, but it's harder to appreciate due to its recency. Vitality have bested Astralis across a single dominant season, but the real question is whether they can sustain it. Astralis built a legacy on longevity as well as dominance. The Vitality era may have only just begun, and the looming IEM Cologne gives them a chance to keep the domination running a while longer.