Over the past few weeks, Counter-Strike 2 players have repeatedly expressed their concerns about the current stage of Premier and the game being infested with cheaters. Today’s CS2 update aims to fix that.
The July 29 CS2 update introduces some much-needed changes to Valve’s competitive shooter, bringing improvements to the game’s anti-cheat and adding new Cologne 2026 stickers that are a bit more affordable than the existing ones.
In this article, we’ll go through everything you need to know about the latest CS2 patch.
CS2 Adds New Cologne 2026 Ranked Series Stickers and Updates to VACnet
The biggest highlight in the new CS2 update, at least for cosmetic enjoyers, is the new Cologne 2026 Ranked Series stickers.
These stickers look pretty similar to the ones we already have in the shop, but they indicate a team’s final standing in the design.
“The original dynamic pricing system determined the relative interest in players and teams, but it didn’t produce reasonable prices,” Valve said in a statement. “So the Ranked stickers have a lower price, but with the same relationship between players and teams as the Event Series stickers.”
The devs also confirmed that the Cologne 2026 Major Shop will only be available until September 29th.
Another important change in the new CS2 update is the new and improved VACnet. According to the devs, they have managed to fix a bug in the anti-cheat that allowed malicious players to avoid being processed by VACnet. This has been corroborated by initial reports surfacing on social media forums, where many claim that rage hacks and spin bots are now getting swiftly detected by VAC.
CS2 July 29 Patch Notes
Without further ado, let’s check out the detailed patch notes for the CS2 July 29 update, as confirmed by Valve:
[ COLOGNE 2026 MAJOR ]
- The Ranked Series stickers are now available for purchase. 50% of royalties are shared with players, teams, and the tournament organizer.
- Items in the Cologne 2026 Shop will be available for purchase until September 29th.
[ MAP SCRIPTING ]
- Fixed a bug where scripts would fail to load in tools mode until a manual recompile.
[ MAPS ]
Boulder
- Updated to the latest version from the Community Workshop (Update Notes)
Fachwerk
- Updated to the latest version from the Community Workshop (Update Notes)
Shelter
- Updated to the latest version from the Community Workshop (Update Notes)
[ MISC ]
- Fixed a bug which prevented some users from claiming Collection Catalog XP for The Dead Hand Collection.
- Fixed a bug that allowed malicious players to avoid being processed by VACnet.
