The most popular map in Counter-Strike throughout history

A month ago, Valve replaced Overpass with Dust2. For the first time since 2017, developers added not a new map to the pool, but changed two old ones. Over 20 years, developers have developed the map list in different ways: at first, it barely fit, then old maps were shuffled, and in recent years they started updating the map pool. In this article, you will learn: the most popular maps in Counter-Strike during each year, which map pool was the most balanced, and which map is the most played in history.

Which maps were the most popular?

Over 20 years, only five maps were truly popular. In 2006, Nuke took first place, in 2007 - Train, from 2015 to 2018, Mirage held the lead. In other years (excluding 2024), Inferno was played most often. It is also the most popular CSGO map over 20 years - the gap from Mirage in second place is almost a thousand maps.

At CS:GO Majors, the situation is different. Due to the short distance of the tournament map pool, it often does not reflect real popularity, but Inferno still became the most played map seven times. Mirage was played six times, Dust2 and Train twice each, and Cobblestone, Cache, Vertigo, and Nuke once each.

How did the map pool change?

From 2004 to 2007, there is only statistics for Inferno, Nuke, Dust2, and Train - all were popular about the same. Later, Tuscan and Mirage joined them. Throughout the original Counter-Strike maps history, Inferno has a huge lead over competitors - 3157 compared to 2.5 thousand for Nuke. Train and Dust2 have around 2.3 thousand each, while Tuscan has only a thousand.

These maps transitioned to other games in the series - they were available in the beta version of CS:GO in November 2011. The first two CS:GO Majors were played on five maps: four legends plus Mirage, where only 228 games were played in CS 1.6.

By the end of 2013, three more maps were added - Overpass, Cobblestone, and Cache, after which no new maps appeared until the Major in Berlin.

Eight maps are enough to send some for rework. In 2014, Train was replaced by Cache; in 2015-2016, Nuke was replaced by the updated Train. Then Inferno was replaced by Nuke and finally Dust2 by Inferno.

Updated maps slowly settled into the pool. In 2013, Nuke accounted for 16% of all games; in 2014 - 10%. After its return in 2016 - 4% of games; in the following two years - 7%, and only by 2020 did it rise to 16%.

Before the break, Inferno was the most popular map, with about 25% of all matches played on it. It never reached such popularity again, although it reached around 20% by 2018. Inferno under CS2 also shook this figure - only 10% of matches played in 2024 and 16% in 2023.

In 2019, Valve changed its strategy and focused on adding new maps instead of reworking old ones. Initially, it didn't work out: Vertigo was the least popular in the pool until the beginning of 2024 when it yielded its peculiar achievement to Inferno.

However, Valve then introduced Ancient - the most popular map in 2023, even though it was added to the pool in 2021. Anubis is rapidly catching up with a share of 16% in 2024. Currently, these are the most popular maps, while Mirage and Inferno are losing popularity.

Which map pool was the best?

The simplest explanation for an ideal map pool is an equal number of games on all best CS maps. Valve made many attempts to approach this level: in 2014, over 60% of all matches were played on Dust2, Inferno, and Mirage alone. Only with the addition of Vertigo to the pool did they manage to find relative balance: Mirage and Inferno still remained at the top, but no map had more than 20% of matches played on it.

However, even though Vertigo brought balance to the map pool, it remains the least popular map with a maximum share of 12%. In terms of popularity, it falls far behind Cache, which had a maximum share of over 20% in 2015.