What’s next for female CS? A look at 2026 and beyond for women’s Counter-Strike

In the wake of 2025, we were left with many unanswered questions regarding women’s CS2: What would happen when sponsors dropped out, and events closed down? It seemed everyone had lost faith in the scene. Most female agents were left without a sponsor or team, unsure where they could compete in the scene. 

Female CS is currently in one of the worst states it’s ever been in, with the suspension of ESL impact last season in 2025. One of the only and biggest female-only CS tournaments in the game, it left us feeling like we have nowhere to go. Luckily, we had an announcement of a new League for the 2026 JB Pro League Female.

This features only female CS teams, with four rounds of qualifiers leading to a main event in February. This is an attempt to fill the hole left by ESL Impact. Unfortunately, the prize pool is not enough to sustain these players. They are already getting far lower salaries than male players, with no real prize pool on top, how can we expect them to make this a career? 

In addition, we saw many sponsors drop their players last year, citing profitability as the main reason, forcing many of these talented women to end their careers early because it was not financially sustainable for them to continue as female CS pros. Even though was saw Imperial Valkyries qualify for a big mixed tournament, this still wasn’t enough to shed light on the female scene.

Professional Female Counter-Strike stretches back nearly as far as the origins of Valve’s tactical shooter itself. The first female CS team to really gain prominence in the scene was Les Seules (The Outsiders), who were fronted by Sofi “Sophie” Byström. She was joined by prominent Swedish and Danish players like Anna “aNNa” Nordlander, Malin “Malla” Ohman, and Emily “Vixen” Clewett as early as 2004 for the Electronic Sports World Cup. 

They placed fourth in the event, losing out on the $18,000 prize pool, but they led the way for women in Counter-Strike alongside LadieS, All for One, and EIBO. The bracket of 16 teams may have been a shadow of what was seen in the 41-team ESWC male league (and $100,000 prize pool), but it showed there was promise in letting the women face off, too. 

Female CS has been steadily supported since the mid-2000s, with a wealth of tournaments throughout that decade and beyond, including DreamHack Summer 2007, ESL EMS Female Finals, ASUS Open Autumn, and G3XCUP, which closed out the decade. The explosion of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in 2012 saw renewed vigour for the women’s esports scene, especially in 2015, which saw its biggest push to date. 

Intel Challenge Katowice 2015, the Copenhagen Games 2015 Female Tournament, and the ESWC for 2015 were among the biggest female-led esports tournaments of this time. Prize pools now go as high as $30,000, a notable improvement over those of a decade earlier. Things only scaled throughout the back-end of the 2010s and approaching the 2020s; XSET, CLG.Red, FURIA Fe, Originem, and GXR.fe became mainstays that fans enjoyed seeing regularly appear (and win) at the dozens of tournaments now happening year-round. 

It brings us to 2022 and the ESL Impact League, promising “GG for All” with its staggering cumulative prize pool of $1.2m. Finally, after 18 years since female CS had arrived on the pro scene, it was being taken seriously. Nigma Galaxy would go on to achieve first place in the first four seasons from 2022 to 2023, before 2024 saw Imperial Female knock them off the top spot. The team would hold this position again for the Stockholm Finals at the end of this year, again collecting the $123,000 cash prize. 

Last year saw the final two ESL Impact League tournaments. Season 7 and Season 8, which saw FURIA Fe and BIG EQUIPA reign respectively. Unfortunately, in October 2025, ESL FACEIT Group announced that it had suspended the Women’s CS circuit. It was claimed that its “current economic model” was “simply not sustainable”. Where does that leave us now in February 2026? Well, there’s only the JB Pro League Female Season 1 announced so far. At a time when we usually have the full roster ahead of us, it’s bleak. 

While the professional CS women’s division looks to be in limbo, female Counter-Strike players are still supported through a few official means. Most notably, this includes the FECS (Female Counter-Strike) hub on FACEIT, dubbed the “biggest female community,” which hosts community events, updates, and memes for girls in the scene. Leaderboards showcase some of its biggest Level 9 and Level 10 players competing, and it remains active right now. 

That’s it for as far as safeguarding women in Counter-Strike goes now. Valve itself does not have a filter through either its Competitive or Premier official server hosting for women who play the game. Considering how vital communication is, and the open channel of anonymity as people hide behind Steam usernames, the wider CS community isn’t always the most welcoming for us.  

Women’s VALORANT is the closest possible comparison to female CS in 2026, and the VCT Game Changers are leading the charge for good reason. Riot Games’ major VALORANT esports tournament shows that a tactical, hardcore shooter can be inclusive and still garner traction. The 2025 version of the event, held at LoL Park in Seoul, saw 10 teams compete for $500,000 and was watched by nearly 230,000 people. 

That’s to say nothing of other popular shooters and how they support their female playerbase as well. EA’s Apex Legends had the Her Galaxy Tournament with its $100,000 prize pool, or the Logitech-sponsored TSM Women’s Invitational B-tier event offering $10,000 in cash prizes, too. Then there’s the Celestial Cup, a monthly women-only Rainbow Six Siege tournament which has gone strong as recently as November 2025. With marginalised groups, it often comes down to the community to push before sponsors take notice. 

All Valve really needs to do to support female Counter-Strike is prove its viability for sponsors and promoters by pushing the women’s teams at some of its largest Counter-Strike tournaments. ESL FACEIT Group may have pulled the plug at the end of last year, but Valve itself, as the game’s developer, has the power to give credibility and its backing to a good portion of the player base at the higher level. 

Are we likely to see cash prizes as high as $123,000, as ESL FACEIT Group offered through the Impact League? No. That’s a core reason why female CS has wound down in 2026, but a lot more can be done for females in the space than the apparent lack of care we’re currently seeing suggests. Same too with the inclusion of women-only servers across Competitive and Premier, even if that would be challenging to “prove” to admins at a larger scale. 

Female Counter-Strike has had a rich and storied legacy over the last two decades, even if Valve (and the game’s tournament hosts) seem uninterested in supporting it. The game arguably peaked in popularity in the mid-2010s and had a brief resurgence with the transition to CS2 in 2023, but it became a hard sell to the likes of ESL FACEIT Group, and the plug was pulled. While other developers are directly backing women in their games, such as VALORANT’s VCT Game Changers, the same cannot be said for Valve, which has left it to third-party hosters to make the game safer for women.