Team Vitality are the champions of the StarLadder Budapest Major after defeating FaZe Clan 3-1 in the grand final, making Counter-Strike 2 history in the process.

The win sees them lift their second Major trophy of the year, becoming the first back-to-back Major winners in CS2, and the first to win consecutive Majors since Astralis in 2019.

Vitality Demolish FaZe After Map 1 Defeat

The final started entirely in the hands of FaZe, with Finn “karrigan” Andersen and co. making Vitality look like a tier-two team with an incredible showing on their T side Nuke. Vitality were helpless, constantly flashed or mollied out of positions as the strength of FaZe’s anti-stratting became clear. 

A map that ended 13-6 in FaZe’s favour, it seemed that we wouldn’t be getting the Vitality-favored blowout final that everyone expected, but the script quickly flipped as we headed into Dust2.

Vitality were unstoppable. Their T side decimated FaZe, running them ragged and catching them off-guard on countless occasions as they claimed the B site for their own. It was 9-1 in the blink of an eye, and the two rounds FaZe won at the end of the first half mattered for little as the French organization closed out the map in just four rounds as they moved onto the CT side. 

In our interview with him after the game, William “mezii” Merriman was clear about the fact that Dust2 was the turning point in the series.

“Sometimes CS is this way where everything’s working out, all the duels are going your way, all the timings, every single time you peek, the other guy’s blind or you just peek after the flash,” mezii told Esports.net.

The third map, Inferno, was just as brutal. It was there that Vitality’s victory began to feel inevitable, and where mezii’s British crown became a halo. “For some reason, I had a halo around me; I just wasn’t dying,” he said.

Nothing summed that up more than round 12, where mezii, from a man down situation, broke the hearts of FaZe as he stayed quiet and wrestled the round back into Vitality’s favour with one of the most composed plays of the year. 

EVERYONE QUIET! THE KING IS PLAYING! 👑@kingmezii | #BudapestMajor pic.twitter.com/amX6V1mL3x

— StarLadder CS2 (@StarLadder_CS) December 14, 2025

Heading into Overpass, FaZe could no longer do anything right. Or rather, Robin “ropz” Kool could do no wrong. The Estonian went 20-5 on the T side, cutting down everything in his path as he set Vitality on the way to an 11-1 half. 

13-2, when it was all said and done, FaZe will take some solace in the fact that they avoided becoming the first team to be 13-0’d in a Major final, but that will do little to repair their egos.

As for Vitality, the win all but secures them as the greatest team of all time. They may be one Major shy of the legendary Astralis team, but their dominance has been achieved in a much more competitive era, and it’s something that is still hard to believe. 

The win also sees Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut win his second Major MVP of the year and third overall. It will also probably secure his fourth HLTV best player of the year award, which will see him overtake Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev.