Karrigan Receives CS2 Cologne 2026 Champion Trophy Despite Being a Stand-In

Since the dawn of Counter-Strike 2 Majors, only the five names on a team’s official starting roster have been eligible to get the Major champion trophy. Stand-ins, no matter how many maps they played or how much they contributed to the team, have always been left out.

Valve has just bent that rule for the IEM Cologne 2026 CS2 Major.

Finn “karrigan” Andersen joined Team Falcons roughly two months before the IEM Cologne Major 2026, stepping in as a substitute for Abdul “kyxsan” Khalimi rather than a locked-in roster member. Karrigan went on to lead the team through a dominant, map-loss-free run to the title, closing out the grand final against FURIA with a score of 3-0.

This marked his second Major championship as an IGL, following his win with FaZe Clan at Antwerp in 2022, and it made him the oldest player ever to lift a Major trophy.

Under Valve’s long-standing policy, none of this would have mattered for in-game recognition, as stand-ins are considered eligible to receive a champion trophy. The precedent was set before the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025, when Valve confirmed that stand-ins would not receive champion trophies even if their team won.

This policy held firm when Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev played the entire Austin event as FaZe’s substitute and helped the team throughout its run. However, the trophy still went to broky.

However, following the Cologne 2026 Major, when Valve released the Major’s commemorative in-game items, Karrigan was awarded the champion trophy despite his stand-in status, becoming one of the first substitute players in CS2 history to receive it.

On the other hand, kyxsan, the Falcons player Karrigan effectively replaced, did not receive the in-game trophy, even though he remains entitled to sticker-related earnings and was given a Champion sticker of his own.

During the same event, Timur “FL4MUS” Marev also received a quarterfinal-placement trophy in place of Pavel “S1ren” Ogloblin for BetBoom.

Valve has not issued any statement explaining the sudden change to their previous policy at the time of writing, nor have they confirmed whether this reflects a permanent update to how substitute players are treated at Majors.