CS2 Ranks: Premier, Competitive and Wingman
Three rank systems in CS2: CS Rating in Premier, per-map skill groups in Competitive and a separate Wingman ladder. What Valve confirmed, and what it did not.
CS2 does not have one rank. It has three separate systems running at the same time: a number called CS Rating in Premier, a named skill group in Competitive that is tracked per map, and a third ladder in Wingman. They do not feed into each other, which is why your friend can sit on Global Elite on Mirage and Silver on Anubis without anything being broken. Here is what each one actually measures, what Valve has confirmed in writing, and which popular numbers were invented by other people.
The three rank systems
All three went live the day CS2 shipped. The release notes for September 27, 2023 list them in one breath: "Season One of Premier has begun. Enabled Competitive matchmaking. Enabled Wingman matchmaking." They have been updated by separate patches ever since.
| Mode | What you see | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Premier | CS Rating, a number such as 12,400 | One per account, maps chosen by pick and ban |
| Competitive | A named skill group | Separate rank on every map |
| Wingman | A named rank in 2v2 | Its own ladder, separate from 5v5 |
CS Rating: how Premier works
Valve describes CS Rating as "a visible measurement of your Counter-Strike performance" that decides where you land on the global and regional leaderboards. It is a single number, it has no cap, and it ignores which map you played.
The one exact figure Valve has published is the size of a colour band. From the October 10, 2023 patch: "Relegation and Promotion matches will only occur at color boundaries, i.e. every 5000 CS Rating points." So the bands are 5,000 points wide, and the special promotion or relegation game only shows up when you are sitting on one of those lines.
What Valve has never published is a table of colour names and exact ranges. The grids you find listing grey, blue, purple and gold with precise cutoffs are community reconstructions of what people see in the client, not a document from Valve.
That 5,000 step is also what the scale is built from. Valve never named the colours, but the boundaries are arithmetic:
| Band | CS Rating |
|---|---|
| 1st | 0 - 4,999 |
| 2nd | 5,000 - 9,999 |
| 3rd | 10,000 - 14,999 |
| 4th | 15,000 - 19,999 |
| 5th | 20,000 - 24,999 |
| 6th | 25,000 - 29,999 |
| 7th | 30,000 and up |
How much a win gives you and a loss takes away has never been published. All Valve has said is that it tunes those amounts: the same October 2023 patch raised the possible win and loss values so players would reach their real level faster after calibration. As for the rating expiring through inactivity, Valve has said nothing at all. That mechanic is only documented for skill groups.
CS2 ranks in order (Competitive)
Competitive keeps a hidden rating and shows you a named skill group, and since CS2 launched that group is per map. Valve announced it as "per-map Skill Groups" when the game came out.
The rank does not appear right away. From the June 25, 2024 patch: "In Competitive Matchmaking, per-map skill groups are now revealed after you earn two wins on a map." Two wins on that specific map and the badge shows up, though the rating was being tracked from your first game.
The eighteen ranks, bottom to top:
- Silver I, Silver II, Silver III, Silver IV
- Silver Elite, Silver Elite Master
- Gold Nova I, Gold Nova II, Gold Nova III, Gold Nova Master
- Master Guardian I, Master Guardian II, Master Guardian Elite
- Distinguished Master Guardian
- Legendary Eagle, Legendary Eagle Master
- Supreme Master First Class
- The Global Elite
Valve does not publish this list anywhere. You read it off the client, and it carried over from CS:GO unchanged.
Wingman has ranks of its own
Wingman is 2v2 on small maps with a ladder of its own. Valve's patch notes always list it as a separate mode next to Competitive and Premier, and your match history splits the three apart. Climbing in Wingman moves nothing in Competitive and adds no CS Rating.
Getting into Premier for the first time
Valve has never published entry requirements for Premier. There is no line in the patch notes about Prime or a profile level gating the mode, so the guides that quote "Prime plus profile rank 10" are repeating community observation, not a document.
What is certain is that the rating is not handed to you up front. A number shows up after wins, and Valve has not said how many the very first time around. The only figure it has given is the seasonal one, ten wins. Until the number exists you still play, you just do not appear on the leaderboard.
Season medals, on the other hand, have stated conditions: an account in good standing, 25 Premier wins, and an active CS Rating when the season ends. The colour of the medal follows the highest rating you reached that season, and the bars on it count wins, one bar per 25, up to five.
Premier ranks versus FACEIT levels
The comparison comes up constantly, so, briefly: FACEIT is a third-party platform with its own levels and its own rating, unrelated to Valve matchmaking. Your CS Rating does not feed a FACEIT level and a FACEIT level does not feed your CS Rating. There is no official conversion between them and there cannot be one, because the player pools, the matchmaking rules and the servers are all different. Any chart mapping one to the other is somebody's estimate.
CS2 rank distribution: why there is no table here
The question right after "what is my rank" is always "is that good". The honest answer is that Valve has never released rank distribution data, not for Premier, not for Competitive, not once.
The percentages floating around come from third-party trackers counting their own users. The issue is not that they lie, it is who they can see: only players who installed a tracker and linked an account, which means people who care enough about their stats to do that. That is a self-selected group, not a random slice of everyone playing CS2. It also explains why two trackers, or the same tracker two months apart, hand you different numbers for the same band.
The one official yardstick is the leaderboard. Premier has a global and a regional one, and a place there is a real position among the players who made it in.
What changed since CS:GO ranks
The names came over from CS:GO untouched, in the same order. Two things changed around them. Competitive now counts each map separately instead of giving you one rank for the whole mode, and Premier arrived alongside it with its own number.
There is no official conversion between a skill group and a CS Rating, and by design there cannot be a good one: the two run on different math and different pools of games. Any chart claiming that Legendary Eagle equals some exact rating is someone's guess.
What a new season does to your rank
Premier runs in seasons, and the rollover does not wipe you. The patch that opened Season Two put it this way: "Every player will have their CS Rating recalibrated based on their Season One performance, and will need to re-establish their CS Rating by winning 10 matches." The pattern has repeated since. Your number is recalculated from how you played, then hidden until ten wins bring it back.
Skill groups can take a harder hit. In January 2026 Valve expired all of them at once: "Existing per-map competitive Skill Groups have been expired, and will be displayed again once the player obtains the required number of wins." That is rare and it hits everyone together.
There is also an individual version. The client tells you a skill group expired through inactivity if you leave a map alone for long enough. The mechanic is real, but Valve has never stated the number of days, so the figures people quote on forums are guesses.
How to rank up in CS2
Rating moves on results, so the boring things are the ones that work:
- Pick one mode and stay there. Premier and Competitive are counted separately, and inside Competitive every map is its own ladder. Spreading games thin stretches calibration over months.
- A badge on a map needs two wins there, so checking your rank after one game tells you nothing.
- Fix the basics before blaming the rating. Stable frames and a sensitivity you do not change weekly beat another crosshair swap: we have a guide to aim and a breakdown of binds and config.
- Copy from people above you. The pro settings database has sensitivity, resolution and crosshair codes, which is a better starting point than guessing.
Frequently asked questions
Why do I have different ranks on different maps?
The skill group is tracked per map, so a spread is normal. If you want one number instead of a scatter of badges, play Premier: the rating there covers every map at once.
My rank disappeared after a break. Is that a bug?
Probably not. The client says a skill group expired through inactivity, and it comes back once you win on that map again. There is a mass version too: in January 2026 Valve expired everyone's skill groups at once while it adjusted the hidden rating values underneath.
Where can I see how I compare to everyone else?
The Premier leaderboards, global and regional. That is the only official place your standing appears, because Valve does not publish rank percentages.
Sources
Valve patch notes in the Steam news feed: the CS2 release notes that enabled all three modes (September 27, 2023), the season rollover and CS Rating recalibration, and the Season 5 post. Our own breakdown of that patch is in CS2 Season 5, and the ranked system next door is covered in the Valorant ranks guide.
Big CS2 news, first on our Telegram
Patches, tournaments, pro settings. No fluff.
