By Kerem Yıldız

FaZe Clan’s crisis in 2026 has reached a point where the word “slump” no longer applies. The 2022 Major champions hold a 3-11 series record this year, have been eliminated in the group stage of every tournament they’ve entered, and now face the very real possibility of missing the IEM Cologne Major entirely. Three months ago, this team played a Major grand final. Today, they are grinding tier-2 LANs in Bucharest just to survive the VRS cutoff.

How FaZe Went From Budapest Finalists to Group Stage Casualties

The timeline is brutal. In December 2025, karrigan and his squad clawed their way from Stage 1 of the StarLadder Budapest Major all the way to the grand final, where they lost to Team Vitality. It was a miracle run by any definition, and at the time, it felt like a sign that FaZe still had the fire. It was not.

IEM Kraków in late January was the first crack. FaZe went 1-3 in the Swiss stage, their sole win coming against BC.Game (a team featuring s1mple and electroNic, currently ranked in the 40s). Then came a 0-2 destruction by MOUZ: 13-5 on Mirage, 13-6 on Inferno. FaZe barely showed up.

PGL Cluj-Napoca brought a 12th-place finish. ESL Pro League Season 23 Stage 2 delivered more of the same: losses to G2, paiN, and Astralis, with a single consolation win over Monte. The record went from bad to unacceptable, and FaZe’s management made their first move.

NEO Removed After 959 Days as karrigan Loses His Coaching Partner

On March 16, FaZe officially parted ways with head coach Filip “NEO” Kubski. The Polish legend had been behind the bench for nearly three years, joining the organization in July 2023 when RobbaN stepped down. Under NEO, FaZe reached three consecutive Major grand finals at Copenhagen, Shanghai, and Budapest. They also won four S-tier tournaments, including IEM Sydney 2023, the very first CS2 event.

But the recent collapse was too severe to ignore. karrigan himself acknowledged the decision caught the players off guard. He told HLTV that FaZe’s leadership felt a coaching change was necessary even with the Major approaching. He also made it clear the blame did not fall solely on NEO: the entire team had underperformed, and everyone was part of the problem.

Analyst Dominik “GruBy” Świderski stepped in as interim head coach. His first assignment: BLAST Open Rotterdam. It did not go well.

BLAST Open Rotterdam: Aurora and TYLOO Send FaZe Home in Last Place

FaZe’s opening match at BLAST Open Rotterdam put them against Aurora, the Turkish roster featuring MAJ3R, XANTARES, and woxic. Aurora were coming off a grand final appearance at ESL Pro League Season 23 and were playing with the confidence of a team that knows it belongs at the top. They took the series 2-1.

Dropped into the lower bracket with zero margin for error, FaZe faced TYLOO. What followed was one of the most embarrassing results in FaZe Clan history. TYLOO raced to an 8-0 lead on Mirage before karrigan’s side managed to stabilize. FaZe took Ancient 13-8 to force a decider, but crumbled on Overpass, losing 11-13 in a map where Twistzz was invisible and frozen could not find impact when it mattered.

Final placement: 13th-16th. Prize money: $5,000 for players, $15,000 for the org. For a team that played a Major final 100 days earlier, the optics are catastrophic.

After the loss, karrigan spoke to the analyst desk with the bluntness that has defined his career: “If we don’t qualify for the Major, we didn’t deserve to go to the Major, simple as that.”

karrigan and FaZe’s Major Qualification Hangs by a Thread

The math is grim. VRS invitations for IEM Cologne are locked on April 6. According to analyst MischiefCS2, FaZe’s probability of qualifying has dropped to roughly 47.4%, placing them just outside the invite window, below Gentle Mates, BIG, and K27. VRS specialist Udknud pointed out the near-statistical impossibility of the situation: going from second place at one Major to not qualifying for the next has almost no precedent in the system’s history.

FaZe are now scrambling. They signed up for DraculaN Season 6 (March 29 to April 2, Bucharest, $15,000 prize pool), followed by either HLC Belgrade PRO (April 3-5, $30,000) or PGL Bucharest (April 4-11, $1.25M). The problem: Belgrade and Bucharest overlap, forcing FaZe to choose between a tier-2 LAN with easier VRS points and an S-tier event where the competition will be merciless. According to MischiefCS2, skipping Belgrade in favor of PGL Bucharest carries significant risk: without a strong showing at the smaller event, the Major door may shut permanently.

Where the Roster Stands: Who Stays, Who’s Under Fire

The current five reads: karrigan (IGL), frozen, Twistzz, broky (AWP), jcobbb. No changes have been announced, but the pressure on individual players is mounting.

karrigan at 35 is the oldest active IGL in tier-1 CS2. His leadership still defines FaZe’s identity, but his fragging has been below replacement level for months, and fans have been calling for his retirement louder than ever. The Budapest run bought him goodwill. The 2026 results are spending it fast.

Twistzz and frozen remain the team’s primary firepower, but neither has been consistent this year. Twistzz was particularly poor against TYLOO in Rotterdam, and frozen struggled on the deciding map of that same series. When both stars go quiet simultaneously, FaZe have nobody to bail them out.

broky continues to polarize opinion. Once considered a top-10 AWPer, his form has been inconsistent since the departure of ropz to Vitality and the brief s1mple loan experiment in mid-2025. His clutch attempts still produce highlight-reel moments, but the floor has dropped.

jcobbb, the youngest member of the squad, joined after rain‘s departure in September 2025. karrigan praised him publicly during the Budapest Major run. Since then, jcobbb has posted some of the lowest individual ratings on the team, and community calls for his removal have grown persistent.

NEO’s replacement has not been named. GruBy remains interim, and FaZe have said only that they are “evaluating options for the future.” Whether a permanent coaching hire arrives before the Major, if FaZe even make it, is an open question.

What Comes Next for FaZe: Survive or Rebuild

Two paths are visible. In the first, FaZe win DraculaN and scrape together enough VRS points to qualify for IEM Cologne, where a deep run could reset the narrative. karrigan has done this before. The Budapest Major itself was supposed to be the end, and instead it produced one of the most emotional runs of his career.

In the second, FaZe miss the Major, and the organization faces a decision it has been delaying since mid-2025: whether to rebuild around frozen and Twistzz with a new IGL, or whether the karrigan era at FaZe, which has produced one Major trophy, three grand final appearances, and a decade of relevance, finally reaches its endpoint.

Neither outcome would be shocking at this point. That in itself is the story. A year ago, FaZe missing a Major was unthinkable. Today, karrigan is heading to a $15,000 LAN in a Romanian gaming pub, trying to save his team’s season.

The VRS deadline is April 6. The clock is running.