All CS2 Maps: The Active Duty Pool in 2026

The Active Duty pool is the short list of maps that decide professional Counter-Strike. Seven maps, chosen by Valve, played at every Major and in every Premier match. Everything else sits in Reserve — still playable, just not where titles are won.

Two changes reshaped the pool during 2026. If you stopped following in 2025, the list below will look unfamiliar.

What changed in 2026

In January, Premier Season Four brought Anubis back into Active Duty and removed Train, barely a year after Train had returned.

In July, Season Five replaced Overpass with Cache. Overpass had posted the lowest pick rate at the IEM Cologne Major, and Cache came back after seven years away, following a full remake by its original author, Shawn "FMPONE" Snelling. A community map returning to the top level is rare. Cache has now done it twice.

The seven CS2 maps in the pool

Dust II

No map has been played more. Dust II has been the reference since 2001, and it has survived every version of Counter-Strike without needing to change what it is: long A and its doors, the raised catwalk, tunnels to B, mid and the pit. It is the map everyone learns first and the one everyone still argues about.

Mirage

The comfort map. An open mid you fight over with window and connector, palace overlooking A, apartments feeding B. Mirage is the most played map in matchmaking because it is legible: the structure is obvious within one round, even if mastering the mid duel takes years.

Inferno

The tightest map in the pool. Banana to B, apartments to A, and corridors narrow enough that nothing happens without utility. Inferno rewards teams who plan their smokes and molotovs; it punishes everyone else. More rounds are decided by grenades here than anywhere else.

Nuke

The only map built vertically: two bombsites stacked one above the other inside a power plant, with outside, ramp, the vents and the hell-to-heaven axis connecting them. Nuke has the steepest learning curve of the seven and has historically been the most CT-sided.

Ancient

The Mesoamerican temple map, added to the pool in 2021. Jungle, stone and a mid section that dictates almost everything: control mid on Ancient and both sites open up. Still the most divisive map among players who prefer the older layouts.

Anubis

Egypt, and water. A canal cuts the map in two, bridges cross it, a palace watches over one of the sites. Anubis is the most open map in the pool, which makes it the one where a single well-timed push changes a round completely. Removed, then brought back in January 2026.

Cache

Soviet industrial, and the clearest map of the seven. Squeaky door, highway, an open mid, two sites you take in at a glance. Cache was removed in 2019 in favour of Vertigo, rebuilt from scratch, bought by Valve, and reinstated in July 2026. Its readability is exactly why players missed it.

What is not in the pool

Overpass, Vertigo and Train are now in Reserve. Office has never been Active Duty at all — it is a hostage map, and competitive Counter-Strike has been built around bomb defusal for two decades. None of that makes them worse maps; it makes them maps Valve is not currently using to decide tournaments. We wrote separately about the maps that left the pool.

The pool, in three dimensions

Printed in relief, a map stops being a flat overview and starts showing its elevation — which is most of what separates these seven from each other. We make each of them as a framed 3D piece:

The complete set is in the CS2 3D Maps collection.