BLAST Premier Spring Final 2024 is set to take place in London, the first tier-one CS event to do so since ECS Season 8 Finals way back in 2019.
Not only that, but it will also be the first CS2 event to take place on Great British shores.
So, with that in mind, we thought it would be appropriate to take a walk down memory lane in the run-up to the event and look at some of the greatest events in CS history to have happened on UK soil.
The crowning moment of British Counter-Strike in the Global Offensive era was hosting their very own Major, the FACEIT London Major 2018.
A momentous occasion, it featured the first two UK players to ever make it to a Major, dephh and smooya, and the introduction of ZywOo to the world as he played in the Showmatch just weeks before signing for Vitality.
The biggest story of that Major, however, had nothing to do with UK players or the rise of a future GOAT contender. Instead, it had everything to do with Astralis.
It was at the FACEIT London Major that Astralis won the first of their three consecutive Majors, signalling the true beginning of their era and forever cementing their lineup as one of the greatest of all time.
2016 was an incredible year for Brazilian Counter-Strike.
It was during that year that FalleN, coldzera, fer, TACO, and fnx rose to the top of the Counter-Strike rankings with multiple tournament wins, and one of those happened in London.
In fact, that tournament win was a particularly special one for the Brazilian squadron, it happened in one of their final tournaments while still a part of Luminosity.
What made it even better is that the final itself, a 3-2 victory over the newly French G2, is one of the greatest best-of-five finals in the history of Counter-Strike.
Maps were close and traded back and forth, and it looked like G2 had it in the bag when they had the score at 2-1, but a surge from Luminosity saw them secure the series 3-2.
And the rest is history.
Keeping it Brazilian, the great South American nation had less to shout about in CS:GO after the failures of MIBR, but the rise of FURIA gave them hope once more.
FURIA may be struggling in current months, but their breakout event ECS Season 7 Finals was exceptional.
The Brazilians, who were still playing with abeJ and VINI at the time, went all the way to the grand final at the event, taking down prime Astralis in the group stage and North in the semi-finals.
Unfortunately, they later fell to Vitality in the grand final, but we knew then that we had something special in the shape of KSCERATO and the rest of the FURIA squad.
Oh, and ALEX won the event with Vitality, so at least the UK crowd got to see a home favourite win.
If you didn't know already, UK CS has been a bit of a laughing stock in Counter-Strike for the past decade.
Into the Breach gave the UK fans something to shout about at the BLAST.tv Paris Major, so too has mezii and ALEX as well as smooya and dephh, but a full UK team performing internationally is almost entirely unheard of.
Almost.
If you head back to 2015 you'll find a little tournament named Dreamhack Open London 2015. An eight-team event with a $40,000 prize pool, it wasn't exactly S-tier, but it did involve the former Astralis core while they were still on TSM, kennyS' Envy, and a full UK team in the form of EZSkins.com.
Legendary UK player RattlesnK was on the team, and despite winning a huge tournament back in CS:S, he was about to get one of the best wins of his career as EZSkins.com took down the SPUNJ-led Renegades team 16-11 in the group stage.
We're sure there's a little trophy for that somewhere.
Okay, so this might be a bit of a humble brag, but can you blame us for being excited about tier-one CS returning to UK shores for the first time since 2019?
If it's anything like last year's Spring Final, it's bound to be an absolute banger, and we've got some of the world's best teams descending upon England's capital to make sure that's the case once more.
Astralis, FaZe, NAVI, Vitality, G2, SAW, Spirit, and Virtus.pro will all be duking it out for the Spring Final crown, and every single one of them will be more than capable of claiming it.
You'll just have to wait and see which one of them achieves it on June 16th.
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