ENCE have promoted their full academy squad to the main CS2 roster. The move, confirmed on April 1, gives five young players the chance to earn a permanent spot on the team after ENCE benched their entire international lineup three weeks ago.

This is not a rebuild. This is a factory reset.

ENCE’s New CS2 Roster: Who Made the Cut

millert, teme, Schwarz, Cliqq, and Matz now represent ENCE at the highest level, with academy head coach George “Whitey” White retaining his role. The average age of this lineup sits at 18.6 years. Four Finns and a Georgian IGL. That is the bet ENCE are making.

ENCE themselves are calling this an “interim transition-period roster,” and they have made it clear they will continue scouting and trialing players from outside the org. Translation: perform or get replaced.

The numbers tell you where these players are coming from. teme leads the pack with a 1.06 HLTV Rating 3.0 across 403 academy maps. Schwarz, who took over in-game leading last summer, holds a 1.02 rating over 357 maps. millert, the team’s AWPer, sits at 0.98. Cliqq (0.92) and Matz (0.83) round out the roster with less experience and lower numbers, but both are products of the ENCE youth pipeline that the org has invested in since 2022.

The academy’s world ranking at the time of promotion: #114 on HLTV. Not exactly top-30 material.

Why ENCE Benched a Full Roster for Finnish CS

On March 11, ENCE put sdy, podi, Neityu, F1KU, kRaSnaL, and head coach enkayJ on the transfer list. All of them. The org’s statement was blunt: competing internationally had become financially unsustainable.

That January 2026 roster lasted barely two months. ENCE had signed the Polish duo of F1KU and kRaSnaL on January 6 to replace myltsi and rigoN, and the experiment failed before it ever gained traction. No Major qualification. No Tier-1 LAN appearances. The org spent money it could not afford on results it never got.

ENCE’s GM Niklas “Willkey” Ojalainen framed the pivot as a return to roots. Finnish talent at the core, long-term development over short-term results. The IEM Katowice 2019 grand final with an all-Finnish roster remains the org’s greatest achievement, and it is clearly the blueprint they want to revisit.

The Academy Pipeline Actually Works

This is the part most people overlook. ENCE Academy is not some afterthought slapped together for content. Founded in 2022, it has already produced two players who made it to the main roster before this mass promotion: podi (promoted May 2024) and myltsi (promoted July 2025). Matz became the first graduate of the even deeper ENCE Prospects coaching program to reach academy level, joining in February 2026.

Head of Academy Eemeli “Woomera” Ikonen has been quietly building a structured development system with multiple tiers. Prospects feed into Academy, Academy feeds into the main team. It took three years, but the pipeline just delivered an entire starting five.

What Comes Next

ENCE are not pretending this roster will compete at the top of CS2 tomorrow. The “interim” label exists for a reason. They will scout, they will trial, and some of these five players may not survive the process.

But the direction is locked in. ENCE are done chasing international talent they cannot afford. Finnish CS, young players, internal development. If it works, the org has a sustainable model in a scene where most teams are bleeding money. If it does not, ENCE become a regional team that never climbs back.

Either way, the academy kids just got the keys.