IEM Cologne 2026 Teams – Who’s Competing?
IEM Cologne kicks off this week, with 32 teams competing at the Cathedral of Counter-Strike in Cologne. Vitality enter as favourites for the tournament, but they finally showed some vulnerability when they were knocked out in Atlanta.
The rest of the field will be hoping they show some more chinks in their otherwise formidable armour, and, below, we look at a handful of teams, including some underdogs, that have a good shot of progressing in the first CS2 major of the year.
Team Vitality
It feels a bit cliched at this point, but it’s difficult to look past Vitality for the win. They lost out to NAVI at IEM Atlanta, but that was put down to burnout and a lack of practice.
Entering stage three at Cologne means they get an extra nine days to rest up and play together as they bid to equal Astralis’ records of four total and three consecutive wins at majors.
Team Spirit
Spirit down the Falcons at PGL Astana, benefiting from the absence of both Vitality and NAVI. In the final, against the Falcons, donk scored a hugely impressive 1.61, and when he’s playing on form, there are very few teams that can overcome the Russian outfit.
Spirit won last year’s event, although it wasn’t a major in 2025, and they are widely considered the second-best CS2 team in the world. However, they, like all other teams, will be hoping to avoid Vitality, who are on a 5-match win streak in head-to-heads.
NAVI
NAVI’s win over Vitality cemented their position as CS2 frontrunners, almost on a par with Team Spirit. Beating Vitality and emerging as Atlanta winners means they could either still be on a high or suffering a hangover.
They were the first major winners, in Copenhagen 2024, and the only team to have featured in every Counter-Strike major. However, they will have to play at their best and hope both Vitality and Spirit drop a gear if they are to win in Germany.
Falcons
The Falcons finished as runners-up in Astana and again in the CS Asia Championships. They have strengthened their roster, and it shows, but they will have to improve to go one better here.
They do have m0NESY and NiKo, as well as relative newcomer kyousuke, so they could still progress well.
MOUZ
MOUZ has yet to win a Valve major, despite reaching the latter stages of several tournaments and are mainstays in major tournaments. In Cologne last year, they reached the final.
Recently, they finished 3rd at the CS Asia Championships and achieved the same result in Astana. MOUZ has a very well-rounded lineup with all of their starters pitching in to get results.
9z
9z is something of a difficult team to forecast. They win around two-thirds of their local matches, although the South American leagues aren’t necessarily top-tier. But they have also shown in recent tournaments that they can mix it with top-tier teams. In Astana, they dominated MOUZ 3-0 and beat Falcons 2-1.
They progressed from the group stages of that tournament with a 3-0 record. It remains to be seen how well they perform in the latter stages, but they can win matches.
GamerLegion
GamerLegion will be hoping to build on their Astana performance. The German team will have home support for the majority of its matches, which can lead to some helpful shouts.
They finished runners-up to NAVI in Kazakhstan, although NAVI didn’t have too difficult a time in their 3-0 wipe. They also finished in the top 4 at BLAST Premier Rivals Fort, where they lost to Vitality. GamerLegion struggles against top-tier teams but could still go deep in the tournament if fixtures go their way.
