CS2 News Roundup: Karrigan to Falcons, Animgraph 2, Vitality Win ESL Grand Slam

Karrigan to Falcons

It is truly the end of an era. After a frankly horrible year-and-a-half, FaZe Clan have lost yet another member of the 2022 world-beating roster, and arguably the most important bastion of their identity. The day we all knew was coming has arrived. Finn “karrigan” Andersen has left FaZe Clan, and reunited with his old coach Danny “zonic” Sørensen and old teammate Nikola “NiKo” Kovač at Team Falcons.

Whilst this move is undeniably rough for FaZe Clan – with rumours of Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken reprising his IGL role out of necessity – there is a chance that this could be precisely what Falcons and karrigan need. The legendary IGL has his chance to play with and improve two of the brightest young stars in CS, in Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov and Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin, with the experienced pieces of René “TeSeS” Madsen and NiKo by his side.

Falcons are looking to get over their unfortunate choking habit, and will doubtless hope that the edition of Counter-Strike’s Greatest Showman will aid them in their quest to win S-Tier trophies. Either way, there is now the potential for a particularly beautiful story to be written…

Could karrigan lead NiKo to his first Major trophy and, as NiKo said in this tweet, will the pair be able to ‘take care of unfinished business’?

Animgraph 2 Is Finally Here

Valve have pushed their Animgraph 2 update to full release in CS2. This is a complete overhaul of the way player models function in the game, and comes after an earlier update in the summer of 2025, which made significant changes to the way first-person animations – such as weapon inspects and reloading – looked.

It is very early days for Animgraph 2, with the update being less than 24 hours old at the time of writing. Still, general popular consensus appears to be positive, with players like Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom posting on X that ‘1 taps might be back’, and Owen “smooya” Butterfield concurring that the game ‘feels unbelievably crisp’.

Good signs for Counter-Strike, even if the opening night of the update had a pretty crazy bug in which the FAMAS of all guns was absurdly overpowered for a couple of hours before Valve swooped in and fixed it. It will be interesting to see how Animgraph 2 impacts the professional scene and, eventually, the meta.

Vitality Win ESL Grand Slam

I hope you’re sitting down, as this news is going to shock you…

Vitality won an event! Who saw that coming? Not only that, but they took home the coveted ESL Grand Slam. With their dominant victory at IEM Rio 2026, Vitality made history by becoming the only team to win two back-to-back ESL Grand Slams. Robin “ropz” Kool made even more history by becoming the only player to have three Grand Slams to his name!

It is pretty clear at this point that Vitality are indeed the greatest Counter-Strike team of all time. All that remains to be seen is precisely how far they are going to take this era. As it stands, no other team seems to be able to put up much of a fight against them, but perhaps karrigan’s time in Falcons will end up changing the narrative…