What Was The Last CS:GO Major?
Blast Paris Major 2023
The last ever CS:GO major was the Blast.tv Paris Major 2023, set in the celebrated Accor arena in Paris as the world’s top CS:GO teams gathered to crown the final CS:GO champion. Held from May 8th to May 21st, the event featured 24 of the top CS:GO teams in the world and had a prize pool of $1,250,000. However, only one team could emerge victorious and take home the trophy as the last CS:GO major winner of all time.
Group Stage
In order to make it to the Major, and earn their own stickers in the game, as well as the chance to win $500,000 as the Major winner, the teams first had to make it to the group stages of the event. Every team that reached the group stages had earned their place, and the competition was fierce.The event started with a series of best of 1 (bo1) matches, which as always, led to some crazy matches and big upsets such as Heroic beating Faze. While elimination matches were played in the best of 3 (bo3) format, eventually the group stage had led to the elimination of Navi, Fnatic, NiP, Ence, BNE, G2, 9INE and Furia.
Group-stage results for BLAST Paris Major 2023 from HLTV.org
Playoffs
Day 1 – Quarter finals
The first day of the quarter finals stage started off with an epic rematch between Heroic and Faze, leading to another victory for Heroic in 2-1 fashion. Next up was Vitality vs. Into The Breach (ITB), resulting in a swift 2-0 victory for Vitality. ITB was a relatively new contender and making it to the playoffs already exceeded all expecations for them as a team, so their loss to Vitality was somewhat expected.
Day 2 – Quarter finals
The next day of the playoffs featured several teams that had proven to be dark horses during the Major thus far such as GamerLegion (GL), Monte and Apeks. Up first was Monte vs. GamerLegion. GL had been performing well throughout the tournament and they continued to impress with a 2-0 victory against Monte. Liquid then faced off against Apeks, and despite being heavy favorites, lost in their quarter-finals match, which was the last quarter-finals match before the semi-finals began the next day.
Quarter-finals results for BLAST Paris Major 2023 from HLTV.org
Day 3 – Semi-finals
The semi-finals started with Heroic vs. GamerLegion, which turned out to be a very close match until the very last map (Mirage), where GamerLegion showed their true strength and dominated Heroic with a 16-6 scoreline leading them to a 2-1 victory.
Next up was Vitality vs. Apeks, a match where analysts predicted a quick 2-0 for Vitality. The match did in fact end 2-0 for Vitality, but likely not as comfortably as analysts were expecting. Apeks put up a tough battle on both maps, ending 14-16 (Mirage), and 12-16 (Vertigo) respectively on the two maps they played. This meant that Vitality and GamerLegion would go on to face each other in the grand final, a matchup very few people had predicted.
Day 4 – Grand Final
The day had finally arrived. The grand final of the very last CS:GO Major was here, and the arena was absolutely packed with a sold out arena at capacity meaning over 20.000 attendants were spectating the finals live. The crowd was ecstatic to see a French team in the finals of the last CS:GO major set in Paris, as you would expect. After the map veto we were left with Overpass, Nuke, and finally Inferno if needed – Unfortunately it was not.
The match started on Overpass with an 11-4 lead for Vitality, which quickly led to a 16-6 map conclusion and a 1-0 start for Vitality. On Nuke, however, GamerLegion came in swinging and started off with a 10-5 half. At this point, the crowd was starting to get worried that Vitality would fall short and lose their shot at the Major trophy in their home country. Luckily Vitality came back stronger than ever on the second half and closed out the map 16-13 in their favor, leading to their first ever Major win and the epic conclusion of an era.
Playoff results for BLAST Paris Major 2023 from HLTV.org
Viewership
The last CS:GO major was an event many players wanted to witness, leading to impressive viewership numbers. The event reached 1.52 million peak viewers during the grand final between Vitality and GamerLegion, with an average viewership of 500,000 throughout, making it the third-most-popular Major and tournament in CS:GO history.
Conclusion
The last CS:GO Major, BLAST Paris Major 2023, was certainly one for the ages and one we will remember for a long time. While this was the end for CS:GO, it was not the end for CS. We’ve finally got CS2, and we certainly can look forward to some truly epic moments in the times to come. The new era of Counter-Strike is just getting started.