Biggest CS2 upsets in 2024

There's no more Tier 1 CS2 to watch in 2024 as the teams head to a much-deserved break, however, it's the best time for fans to relive some of the best upsets in the year.

While most fans want to see the best teams go deep in competitions, everybody also loves the rise of an underdog. Luckily we got plenty of upsets in 2024 as CS2 is still a new game and veterans pros had to adapt.

Wildcard, a North American team nobody even expected would qualify for the Shanghai Major, ended up doing damage in the event as they sent the once almighty Virtus.pro packing.

The team captained by the veteran IGL Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz beat Virtus.pro in an elimination best-of-three series during the Opening Stage when everybody predicted Virtus.pro would win easily.

But instead, Wildcard reverse-swept Virtus.pro with wins on Inferno and Anubis after losing the series opener on Ancient. Though the Swedish AWPer Love "phzy" Smidebrant was the best Wildcard player in the match, statically speaking, stanislaw had a couple of huge rounds too.

The early elimination from the Major propelled changes in Virtus.pro for 2025. Mere days after the loss to Wildcard, Virtus.pro benched its long-time IGL and AWPer Dzhami "Jame" Ali.

While Fnatic hasn't been anywhere near the level of its peak in the early years of CS:GO, they were considered more than favorites to survive against Rare Atom at the Shanghai Major.

However, Rare Atom made history at the event and pulled a reverse sweep just like Wildcard did to Virtus.pro. The Chinese team won comfortably on Inferno and Nuke off the back of strong performances from Junhao "ChildKing" Peng and Andrew "kaze" Khong.

Until this victory, a Chinese team had not won a best-of-three series at the Majors since the FACEIT London tournament in 2018, when TYLOO knocked Team Spirit out of the tournament. We'll see if this motivate Rare Atom and other Chinese teams in 2025.

Although FaZe is full of elite players, they had a rough season during the second semester of 2024.

And, just when many were already speculating some roster changes, FaZe eliminated Vitality and G2, two of the favorites to win the Shanghai Major, in the playoffs.

Both matches were surprising on their own. FaZe lost the first map to Vitality only to dominate them on both Mirage and Anubis. FaZe nearly trounced G2 in the semifinals as Nikola "NiKo" Kovač and co. only reacted in the second half of Nuke.

These wins and Robin "ropz" Kool's form proved to fans that FaZe had a shot against Spirit, but they failed to force overtime on Dust 2 and saw Spirit run away with the trophy.

There were lots of question marks surrounding NAVI at the time of the PGL Copenhagen Major in the first semester of 2024.

Fans were unsure that NAVI would reach higher heights without Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyljev and were questioning if Mihai "iM" Ivan deserved a spot in the lineup.

And then, out of nowhere, things simply clicked for NAVI and they never looked back. They beat The MongolZ, G2, and paiN Gaming to advance to the playoffs, and defeated Eternal Fire, G2, and FaZe to win the PGL Copenhagen Major.

At the time, FaZe were a heavy favorite as they had reached seven consecutive grand finals since CS2's release while NAVI were still trying to find their groove. However, strong performances from Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy and Justinas "jL" Lekavicius were more than enough for NAVI to decimate FaZe.

NAVI would add other trophies to their cabinet as the season progressed and proved eto veryone that winning the Major wasn't a fluke.

No other CS2 upset in 2024 top G2 winning IEM Dallas with Jake "Stewie2K" Yip as a stand-in.

Stewie2K stood in for Rasmus "HooXi" Nielsen, G2's IGL at the time, and did a fine job despite being away from competitive Counter-Strike for nearly two years.

The combination of NiKo's basic IGLing, Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov's carrying performances, and the crowd buff for having Stewie2K propelled G2 to defeat Falcons, MOUZ, Team Liquid, FaZe, 9z, and Vitality on their way to the trophy.

That's all for now. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more CS2 news.