The End of the Vitality Era in CS2: How It Started, and Has the Greatest Team in CS History Really Run Out of Gas?
Heading into IEM Cologne Major 2026, Vitality made no secret of how much this event meant to them. They wanted to become the first team ever to win three Majors in a row and put to rest any hope the community still had for real competition at the top of the pro scene. But in Cologne, Vitality didn’t look anywhere near as confident — or as terrifying — as they used to. In this piece, we’ll try to figure out what actually happened, and whether there’s any reason to believe that the reign of apEX and company came to an end in the quarterfinals of IEM Cologne Major 2026.
What kind of shape was the team in coming into the Major?
To understand how the best team in the world flopped at the biggest tournament of the year, we need to rewind the tape a little. The first half of 2026 once again played out on their terms: titles at IEM Krakow, PGL Cluj-Napoca, BLAST Open Rotterdam and, of course, IEM Rio 2026, where Vitality locked in their second straight Grand Slam — something no one had ever pulled off before. And it wasn’t even close: nobody else had come anywhere near that kind of achievement, and once it happened, one thing became crystal clear — for this team, nothing was impossible.
From there, the boys rolled into BLAST Rivals 2026 Season 1 without a single day of practice, stating it outright: the only thing on their minds now was the Major in Cologne. Yet they lifted that trophy too — and in our view, that’s exactly what doomed them. Vitality bought into themselves too much, into their class, their superiority, figuring a couple of weeks would be enough to find their form before the trip to Cologne.
At IEM Atlanta 2026, you could see the players weren’t even trying to win: once again no practice, posting vacation photos from the US — and this time they crashed out in the semifinals, and deservedly so. You’d have thought a loss like that would shake them up a bit, and almost everyone was sure that at the Major, Vitality would remind the whole world who’d been sitting on the CS2 throne for two years running.
IEM Cologne Major 2026
In the lead-up to the tournament, everyone was dying to see what kind of form the top favorites would show up in, and pretty much all of us expected to find those same cold-blooded killers on the server. Putting Vitality at 3:0 in your Pick’Em looked like the easiest, safest call you could possibly make when filling out your predictions for Stage 3.
The very first map ended in a loss to FUT, but thankfully Valve had scrapped BO1 in the third stage, so Vitality were able to claw it back and open the Major with a win. Their second series, though, they dropped 1:2 to 9z — busting a lot of Pick’Ems and, more importantly, planting real doubt about the champions’ condition. There was never any chance this roster missed the playoffs, but that single group-stage loss was exactly what landed them against Falcons in the quarterfinals.
It’s no secret that Falcons have lately been the one team capable of beating them — and they’d done it more than once already. So at the Lanxess Arena, the Bees weren’t walking out for a quarterfinal; they were walking out for a final. A win here would have handed back the confidence and energy they needed, the emotional spark to push all the way to the trophy. But as we know, it didn’t happen — and instead of a trophy, Vitality found themselves staring into an abyss that only true champions climb out of. So, can they?
Where Vitality stand after the loss
In the aftermath, the French captain gave plenty of interviews, and in every one of them he owned it: at this tournament, the team simply wasn’t as good as people expected. And that, honestly, is the main takeaway worth holding onto here.
apEX still wants to win, and now the captain’s biggest job is getting through to his teammates — and that’s going to be the hardest part by far.
ZywOo has always marched to the beat of his own drum, and even Dan himself has admitted that the best player in the world can be downright impossible to deal with at times.
And it’s worth remembering that it was Mathieu Herbaut who couldn’t switch on when it mattered most against Falcons. The French AWPer finished both lost maps with a negative rating, and that’s clearly going to come up in the film review once the Major is over.
As for ropz, the Estonian — unlike his teammates, who couldn’t sleep after the quarterfinal defeat — was already out cruising around with ohnePixel in his Porsche the very next day. On one hand, it won’t change the result one bit; on the other, it’s a worrying sign specifically for this team’s era. Robin isn’t sitting around hollowed out — he wants to live his best life. It’s hard to find motivation when you’ve already won absolutely everything, several times over, and you’re only 26.
The same can’t be said for mezii, who is basically the prime candidate to get cut if the team decides to make a drastic change — not even to upgrade, but purely to shake things up emotionally. A situation like that could easily get into his head, and 2025’s best anchor would no longer be the immovable wall he once was.
The Vitality Era: The Final Chapter, or Just a Cliffhanger?
There’s obviously no clean answer to that question, but if someone forced us to choose, we’d grit our teeth and say: “it definitely won’t be like before.” The biggest thing Vitality lost after the defeat in Cologne is the aura of an unbeatable team — that machine-like vibe that had everyone convinced that on a perfect day, they simply couldn’t make a mistake.
What matters now is that the team sits down and has a very long, very important, very difficult conversation. Nobody doubts the individual skill of every single one of them, but do they actually want to commit to another long grind and prove to everyone that this lineup will live in fans’ hearts forever and go down as the benchmark? Of course they do — but are they willing to pour even more into it than they have over the past year and a half?
Some will say we’ve seen all this before — same story last year, same loss in Cologne — and they’d be right. Back then Vitality managed to pull themselves together by the end of the year and come back in full force in 2026. But doing it a second time is going to be far harder: Falcons are growing into their confidence with karrigan, Spirit get stronger with every tournament, and NAVI and MOUZ are already lining up major rebuilds this summer. There are too many hungry teams circling now — they’ve tasted blood, and that predatory instinct won’t let them simply hand the summit back without a fight.
No, we’re not saying Vitality are done. But we are sure of this much: it won’t be like before. They’ll still take a few tournaments along the way, no question — but they won’t get an easy stroll at any of them ever again.
Alex
Alex is an author and esports observer with more than seven years of experience. He specializes in analyzing new releases in the world of computer games, gaming services, and in-game economies. Alex shares practical experience and an expert perspective on the development of gaming, helping readers understand complex mechanics and stay up to date with the latest news.
