Born to Win. That is quite literally what Natus Vincere means when translated into English. No matter how you look at it, the organization has proven time after time that they live up to their name while shattering expectations along the way. They left an indelible mark on the game in the final years of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and now in the early days of Counter-Strike 2, a new-look NAVI is back.
Throughout most of CS:GO’s lifespan, NAVI was always seen as a strong team – but one that could never quite capture the final crown. Never missed a single CS major. Always showed up at international LANs. But when time came to play for the most coveted prize in the game, they never could get both hands firmly on the trophy.
That was, until the dawn of the yellow-and-black era in the post-pandemic world.
2021 was unquestionably the year of Natus Vincere. No other team’s accomplishments even came close to that of NAVI’s: the $1,000,000 Intel Grand Slam Season 3 title, IEM Cologne, the BLAST Premier Fall, and World Finals, and finally the PGL Major Stockholm championship. This hot streak carried over to 2022 and even though they would not enjoy the same level of dominance as the year prior, they were still viewed as one of the best teams in the world and second only to FaZe.
Like every dynasty in competitive sports, the NAVI reign in Global Offensive came to a bittersweet end. The Russian-Ukrainian juggernaut it had been known as for years adopted the modern international roster system with the departures of Denis “electroNic” Sharipov, Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy and Andrii “npl” Kukharskyi in mid-2023 for the replacement trio of Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen, Justinas “jL” Lekavicius, and Mihai “iM” Ivan. A few months into Counter-Strike 2’s release, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev announced that he would be taking a break from competition for the time being which led to NAVI’s signing of Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov. No one knew it at the time, but that move officially signaled the end of the s1mple era that led NAVI to their highest peaks.
Naturally, there were a lot of questions about the organization’s newest roster. They had never even attempted to go international in the past, and now they would do so without the greatest CS:GO player of all time. Could this new experiment hold a candle to the heights of NAVI’s golden run in 2021-2022?
The answer was a resounding yes.
Proving a new formula
Surprising major winners
A podium spot at the 2023 BLAST Premier World Final kickstarted the Aleksib era of NAVI with a bang and gave fans of the project a reignited sense of hope that the organization could be the first to conquer the franchise’s newest installment. A top-four spot at the BLAST Premier Spring Groups 2024 and a 3-1 record at the European Regional Major Ranking tournament were the highlights of the team’s first few months leading to the Major.
In an interview with HLTV.org, jL shared that the team was all set to make a deep run in the first-ever CS2 Major, PGL Copenhagen, even if they wouldn’t win the whole thing at the end. Little did he know, NAVI would be the last ones standing as the dust settled. They scraped through the Elimination Stage on the final day with a 3-2 record, then got seeded into the lower half of the playoff bracket with Eternal Fire as their first opponent. It wasn’t a cakewalk in the slightest, but there was always the sense that the most consistent organization in Major history could draw first blood in the CS2 record books.
NAVI got past Eternal Fire in the quarters with a 2-0 series scoreline to set up a semifinal showdown with G2. Even the unparalleled technical skill of Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov could not prevent Aleksib’s squad from clinching the series on the very last round of regulation in the deciding map of the series. NAVI’s reward for all their efforts was yet another Grand Final series against FaZe – the team that had been their greatest rivals since the post-pandemic era of CS. A close first map and two one-sided games later, NAVI had done it. The international roster solidified themselves as no longer a mere experiment but a proven formula for success. It was the second Major trophy in the organization’s history and the first for everybody on the roster bar b1t, who won his first with s1mple three years prior.
So what did it all mean for NAVI?
Aleksib proves his system works
From an individual perspective, it meant a great deal to the players. Aleksib taking charge of yet another team as its IGL was met with skepticism at first, but throughout time he gained the respect of the entire CS community and capped it off with the most coveted prize in the game. His first attempt at winning a Major was derailed by CS:GO’s greatest dynasty in Astralis, but finally reached the promised land in a journey over five years in the making.
jL was, for the most part of his young career, still trying to establish his name in the scene up until Apeks’ fairytale semifinal run at the BLAST.tv Major Paris in 2023. He’d sign with NAVI just months later and, after an extremely consistent display throughout the Copenhagen Major, made history as the first-ever Lithuanian player to win the Major MVP award.
w0nderful had to fill in the shoes of the greatest CS:GO player to ever live, and he did so with so much maturity and poise despite his young age. Of course there were lots of conversations about his role within the team as just the stand-in for s1mple until the veteran’s eventual return, but his steady development and EVP-worthy performance at the Copenhagen Major proved that, just maybe, NAVI didn’t need s1mple to come back anymore.
Widely regarded as the best rookie of his time and the longest-standing NAVI member on the lineup dating back to his academy days in 2019, b1t was the final remnant of the 2021 roster that pulled off the greatest Major campaign in history. Though he didn’t quite frag out as one of the tournament’s best players, his utility and intangible impact on the server played a big part in the team’s eventual success.
Finally, the Major victory was especially a breakthrough for iM who’d been a professional for a while but never got a taste of life with the juggernaut organizations in competitive CS. GamerLegion’s second-place finish at the BLAST.tv Major Paris was a Cinderella run for the ages and a certified “streets will never forget” story, so for iM to improve on that result with NAVI just a year later was the icing on the cake and the definitive highlight of his career.
Since the Copenhagen Major, NAVI never lost track of their goals and further established their status as the very best team in the world. They would have an incredibly dominant run in the back half of 2024 from June to October, reaching at least the Grand Final in six of seven tournaments they attended in that time frame. NAVI took home gold at the CS2 event of the Esports World Cup before starting their case for the Intel Grand Slam with victories at ESL Pro League Season 20 and IEM Rio.
Even though NAVI’s bid for back-to-back titles at the Perfect World Shanghai Major fell short with an unprecedented Elimination Stage exit, the top-tier run of form they had throughout the year cannot just be brushed off. Their appearance at the Grand Final of any world class event always seemed inevitable, and yet they were completely derailed in the closing act of 2024. There will always be those that doubt and try to undermine their success, especially coming off a humbling result at one of the biggest tournaments of the year. But even then, it’s crystal clear that we are now in a new age of Natus Vincere — and they always find a way to bounce back.
