Valve introduced Premier mode to provide Counter-Strike 2 players with an official competitive matchmaking experience. The goal is to offer an alternative to third-party providers such as FACEIT. Premier started in late September 2023. The data in this article is provided via Leetify. They might not provide exact figures, but the statistics give an indication of how the mode is performing.
Match numbers by quarter
The data details the total number of Premier matches played across nine quarters from the start of 2024 to early 2026:
- Q1 2024: 7,566,080 matches
- Q2 2024: 6,282,866 matches
- Q3 2024: 5,840,358 matches
- Q4 2024: 6,678,433 matches
- Q1 2025: 9,761,381 matches
- Q2 2025: 9,035,298 matches
- Q3 2025: 10,819,260 matches
- Q4 2025: 11,164,237 matches
- Q1 2026: 15,389,786 matches
Development across the years
The first quarter of 2024 recorded 7.5 million matches. January saw 2,559,888 matches, followed by 2,573,853 in February and 2,432,339 in March. Activity decreased during the second and third quarters of 2024. April registered 2,110,215 matches, and the volume continued to drop until it reached a low point in the third quarter with 5.8 million total matches.
The volume began to recover in the fourth quarter of 2024 and reached 9.7 million matches in the first quarter of 2025. Following a slight decrease in the second quarter of 2025, the numbers increased again. The third and fourth quarters of 2025 exceeded 10 million and 11 million matches respectively.
The highest recorded activity occurred in the first quarter of 2026. February 2026 recorded 5,358,815 matches. March 2026 maintained this high volume with 5,228,409 matches. These consecutive months of high engagement brought the quarterly total to 15.3 million matches.
Player drop and potential bot bans
In March 2026, Counter-Strike 2 recorded a peak of 1,722,000 players. This number dropped in the following months, with the peak number of players falling to 1,573,000 in April and to 1,383,000 in May so far.
There are rumors suggesting that Valve is banning large numbers of bot accounts. Bots are typically used in the game to farm rewards and skins. If Leetify’s statistics for April and May show that Premier match activity remains stable or increases despite the drop in overall player count, this would validate the assumption that the decrease in players is simply the bots that have been removed from the game.
