Ahead of the IEM Cologne 2026 Major, Valve announced a rework of how tournament items are sold. The key points from the announcement:

Major Shop rework. Instead of buying capsules, you buy tokens and redeem them for exactly the sticker you want. Prices are set by relative demand: when a sticker sells disproportionately more, its price rises and others fall. There is a buyer protection rule: if a sticker’s price drops by more than 25 tokens within 24 hours of your purchase, the difference is refunded in tokens.

No capsules this Major. Valve says it heard feedback that players prefer direct purchases, and that players in certain regions cannot buy sticker capsules at all, so it is exploring alternatives that let everyone participate. Past-format capsules remain tradable; see our CS2 capsules catalog.

Souvenir-O-Matic. You can now craft your own souvenir: take any normal or Souvenir quality weapon in your inventory, pick a completed match and a player, and get the weapon back in Souvenir quality with gold team, autograph, and map stickers applied. Classic drops live in our souvenir packages catalog.

Pick’Em. Activating a Cologne 2026 Viewer Pass grants a Challenge Coin; each Pick’Em upgrade (Bronze to Silver, Gold, or Diamond) grants 300 tokens redeemable for stickers or souvenirs. Passes are catalogued under CS2 passes.

Revenue share. As before, 50% of tournament item sales go to the tournament organizer, teams, and players, but royalty rates are now performance-based: VRS seeding before the Major, final standings after it.

Team and player autograph stickers from Cologne 2026 will show up in our CS2 stickers catalog as they hit the market.