Team Spirit — a CS2 esports team

Team Spirit was founded on December 6, 2015, and over time it became one of the most recognizable orgs in the CIS across multiple titles. Since 2022, the club’s main office has been based in Belgrade. Spirit entered Counter-Strike in the summer of 2016, when it signed a five-man lineup that had previously played together as the Phenomenon mix. Since then, Spirit has gone from grinding regional qualifiers to winning the Shanghai CS2 Major.

Team Spirit achievements

Spirit has had plenty of standout matches, tense finals, and wins at tier-1 events. The table below highlights the most notable results from recent years.

Winning in Katowice, Cologne, and at a Major gives Spirit a rare “triple” of trophies, putting the tag right up there with the strongest clubs.

Prize money by year

It’s easier to compare seasons when you look at the numbers by year. The table below shows prize money only for Counter-Strike (CS:GO and CS2) from an open results database.

Team Spirit roster history

Spirit has regularly shifted roles and picked up players for specific needs. At the same time, the club often kept its core together for a long time, so most rebuilds were small and easy to follow. Below are the key periods that show how the team grew.

Achievements of the first roster

In June 2016, the lineup that had played as Phenomenon moved under the Spirit tag. That early five featured COLDYY1, S0tF1k, Dima, DavCost, and tonyblack (kibaken). Back then, the team mostly played qualifiers and gained experience on its first LANs.

The biggest results from that era were tied to the minor scene. In 2016, Spirit took second place at the StarLadder Regional Minor Championship CIS (a qualifier for ELEAGUE Major 2017) and earned $15,000. In 2018, the team reached the final of StarLadder & ImbaTV Invitational Chongqing and took $35,000.

The 2019–2022 roster

In spring 2019, Spirit started building a new core. In March, chopper and iDISBALANCE joined, and in September 2019 the roster was boosted by mir and 17-year-old magixx. In early 2021, degster joined as the sniper, and the team looked a lot more dangerous in clutch rounds.

The peak of this period was in 2022. Spirit reached the PGL Major Antwerp 2022 semifinals (3–4th place) and earned $70,000. That same year, the team won FiReLEAGUE 2022: Global Finals and took $100,000. After that, another rebuild started, because the meta was shifting and CS2 was already close.