Valve has finally pulled the trigger and made a map pool change ahead of the upcoming CS2 tournaments, getting rid of Train in favor of Anubis.
As per the official Counter-Strike profile on X, the map rotation will coincide with the end of the third season of Premier on January 19th.
Image: @CounterStrike on X
Let’s discuss what this means for the competitive Counter-Strike scene.
Train is out after only a year in the map pool. Credit: © Valve
Anubis is back in the active duty map pool after only six months on the sidelines. The map was previously replaced with Overpass in July 2025. While the return of Anubis isn’t that surprising in itself, many people are shocked that Train is the map that made way.
Train was heavily reworked and added back into the active duty map pool only a year ago. Over that time, fans and professional players took a liking to the map, so to see it go so soon is disappointing.
With this change, only two out of seven maps in the pool are strategy-focused (Nuke and Overpass), while the remaining five are more centered around individual prowess (Dust II, Mirage, Inferno, Ancient, and Anubis).
The professional map pool in 2026 will be:
Aurora could be back in 2026. Credit: © PGL
Obviously, this change will heavily impact the professional CS2 scene, with the return of Anubis being to some teams’ benefit and to others’ detriment.
Winners:
The best CS2 teams that will be the happiest to see Train go and Anubis return will be FaZe Clan, The MongolZ, and Aurora.
In the case of FaZe and The MongolZ, they both perma-banned Train, so they will now have the ability to ban a different weak map or experiment with a seven-map map pool.
Although Aurora were happy to play Train over the course of 2025, the removal of Anubis really hurt them, as they were considered one of the best teams in the world on the map. This change will surely see them get back into consistent playoff contention.
Losers:
As for the biggest losers, it would probably be MOUZ, Falcons, and Spirit. MOUZ and Falcons used to perma-ban Anubis in the first half of 2025, so they won’t be happy with its return.
Spirit happily played Anubis back then, but they were one of the best Train teams in 2025, so the change could weaken them somewhat. However, they will be coming into 2026 with a new roster, so their map pool is still largely up in the air.
Time will tell which teams adapt best to the new challenge.
Feature image credit: © Valve
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