StarLadder Budapest Major
StarLadder Budapest Major: Hungary is preparing for a historic esports celebration.
Schedule
StarLadder, one of the world's largest esports tournament organizers, is proud to announce that the second Counter-Strike Major tournament of 2025 will return to Europe. For the first time in the history of Major tournaments, Hungary will host the world's best Counter-Strike teams.
The 2025 StarLadder Budapest Major will take place over 16 days, featuring the world's 32 best Counter-Strike 2 teams competing for a total prize pool of $1,250,000, the trophy, and a place in esports history.
The MVM Dome, Hungary's largest and most modern indoor arena, will host the playoffs between December 11 and 14, 2025. It will welcome esports fans from around the world with a spectacular live show and unprecedented stage, lighting, and audiovisual technology.
The importance of Counter-Strike 2 and esports:
Counter-Strike is one of the most influential competitive games in esports history, starting as a community mod in 1999 and now considered the global benchmark for esports. The franchise's sequel, CS2, further raises the bar for esports while attracting millions of players and viewers worldwide.
Esports is one of the most dynamically growing industries today, expected to exceed $1.8 billion globally by 2025, bringing innovation, tourism, and investment to the cities that host the world's biggest competitions.
International broadcast to an international audience:
The StarLadder Budapest Major will be broadcast live in more than 15 languages and is expected to reach more than 50 million viewers worldwide via Twitch, YouTube, and other local television partners' platforms. In addition, community content creators will provide experiences tailored to local audiences, further enhancing the cultural impact of the event.
MVM Dome
MVM Dome is the seventh largest indoor event venue in Europe. Its capacity for sports events and concerts is significantly higher than that of the Budapest Sports Arena. It has 20,022 seats; a total of 50,000 square metres of floor space; innovative, rearrangeable spaces for many indoor sports (handball, basketball and volleyball, futsal, ice hockey, tennis, skating) as well as certain athletic, equestrian and motorcycle competitions, and even swimming competitions and water polo matches in the mobile pool. Through the six entrances to the building, spectators can enter the arena’s interior using eight escalators, leading to the walk-through grandstands accessible on three levels. The structure of the building’s exterior is reminiscent of muscle fibres: the light strips placed on the outward-leaning, elliptical sections not only embrace the building, but the light shows, programmed using various colours, appear to set the entire building in motion. There is a 600 square metre display on the façade of the building. The Main Entrance leads to an impressive foyer, where visitors will be greeted by a grandiose hanging light installation of 848 handmade glass tubes. The programmable sports lighting is also suitable for HDTV broadcasts of the highest-level world competitions, as well as for super-slow-motion recordings due to flicker free technology. The lighting system also plays an important role in the events and concerts, as it is suitable for changing the colour temperature of the auditorium, which means that the lighting functions can be changed without rearranging the arena, only through the pre-programmed lighting controls. This design is the first and is unique in Europe for luminaires of this power. A central display (cube) provides information in the auditorium during the events.