HLTV has published its EVPs and All-Star five for ESL Pro League Season 24, and Vitality dominate both lists after their run in Katowice. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut finished as the event MVP, while Shahar “flameZ” Shushan, Robin “ropz” Kool, Lotan “Spinx” Giladi, Kamil “Wicadia” Serafim, Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov and donk made the EVP cut. ZywOo, flameZ, Oldřich “PR” Nový, Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and Spinx formed HLTV’s All-Star best five.
The awards use HLTV’s updated player-radar metrics, which the outlet says are meant to reflect how EVPs are judged rather than only piling up totals from across the whole event. The player pages now track Rating 3.0, Eco Swing, Impact Rounds, Round Swing, A Game, B Game, C Game, vs Top 10, vs Top Half, Rank in Team and Map Wins. HLTV also pointed readers to its new glossary.
ZywOo edges a crowded Vitality race for MVP
ZywOo’s 34th MVP was not a straightforward win. HLTV noted that four Vitality players finished the group stage above a 1.30 rating, and that ZywOo then produced five player-of-the-map performances in the playoffs on the way to a 1.58 arena rating. That late surge kept him ahead of teammates who were pushing close all event long.
The context matters because Vitality entered the event with questions about whether their form had carried over from StarSeries. HLTV’s answer was blunt: Vitality are back. The outlet added that the result is tempered by apEX’s upcoming absence for PGL Masters Bucharest, but ESL Pro League gave fans one more look at the team’s full main five before the final Major of the year.
flameZ came the closest to stopping ZywOo from taking the medal. HLTV said the rifler posted nine standout maps in Katowice, including 2.00-plus ratings against Falcons and PARIVISION. He also had a map above 1.55 in every Vitality series, which gave him enough peaks across the event to make the MVP race closer than it might have looked on paper. Even so, he settled for another second-place finish and his fifth EVP of 2026.
ropz, Spinx and Wicadia round out the EVPs
ropz delivered one of the steadiest events in the field. HLTV said he had only one map below a 1.00 rating and a 1.30 rating against top 10 teams. His 1.40 rating in groups came from strong maps against 1win, Natus Vincere and Falcons, and he still managed a 1.24 rating in playoffs. The result gives him back-to-back EVPs and six EVP-plus events in 2026.
Spinx was MOUZ’s leader on their run to the final in Spodek. HLTV gave him a 1.34 rating in map wins and a 1.22 overall rating, and noted that MOUZ had a very difficult bracket with an average opponent rank of 5.2. He finished 79% of maps above the 1.00 mark and stood out on Dust2 against Spirit twice, enough to earn recognition in a team run that relied on several players.
Wicadia is the only Aurora player on the EVP list, and HLTV said that after early questions about his adjustment to international Aurora, he has returned to being the team’s most impactful player. Before the third-place decider, he had already delivered strong map wins and pushed Vitality in the semi-finals. His numbers included a 1.19 rating against top 5 and top 10 teams, a 0.16 gap to his next-best teammate, and a 1.10 KPRW mark in round wins compared with 0.94 for the next player on Aurora’s list.
m0NESY was one of Falcons’ few bright spots in a difficult event. HLTV said he has been in excellent form since the summer break, with a 1.33 rating and three EVPs overall. He and NiKo led Falcons in groups, but only m0NESY and Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin offered meaningful resistance against Spirit in the quarter-finals. That steadiness showed in his map-by-map results: he finished in the top three on the scoreboard by rating in 67% of his maps, second only to flameZ at 69%.
donk completed the EVP list despite what HLTV described as an off-event by his own standard. Five of his maps came in at 0.81 or below, and he had three poor arena maps to two strong ones. Even so, his 1.48 rating in map wins, 1.24 KPRW and 1.19 playoff rating were too strong to leave out. Spirit’s easy run helped keep him from higher placement, with an average opponent rank of 25.1, but the award still gives him his eighth of 2026.
Near misses, then the All-Star five
Ádám “torzsi” Torzsás and PR were the closest players to breaking into the EVP list. torzsi looked well placed after a 1.32 group-stage rating, but his playoff numbers collapsed to 0.93 after a poor final. PR was stronger in the arena, where he delivered four strong maps, yet he did not get enough out of the groups to clear the threshold. NiKo was in a similar spot, great in groups but short of the needed playoff form. KSCERATO, William “mezii” Merriman and Vladislav “xiELO” Lysov also fell short, while Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov and Franco “dgt” Garcia were the standout names from the group stage who still missed out.
HLTV’s All-Star best five leans on roles as much as pure star power. ZywOo and flameZ were the obvious selections as the event’s two best players, and PR was the anchor after being the top player in his role despite missing the EVP line. The remaining two slots came down to category balance and the rule limiting teams to a maximum of three players from one lineup.
That meant a choice between apEX and ropz for the IGL role. HLTV said the deciding factor was the gap to the next-best player in that category, which led it to pick apEX thanks to a 10% lead in T-side round win rate over Dorian “xertioN” Berman. Spinx then took the closer spot, leapfrogging ropz and reuniting him with the Vitality core he left behind.
HLTV noted that the selections do not include Thunderpick World Championship 2026.
GAMER2GO previously covered HLTV’s Counter-Strike 2 attributes overhaul, which introduced the metrics used in these awards. Those changes now shape how event honors are compared across maps, roles and opponents, and ESL Pro League Season 24 is the first major test of the system in HLTV’s awards coverage.
apEX making the all-star five over ropz feels like the kind of pick only a role sheet would love. if you watched the event, ropz was just cleaner and more stable map to map, while apEX got a lot of credit for being the IGL on a team with ZywOo hard carrying the ceiling. i get the category balance angle, but it still reads a bit like rewarding the jersey colour more than the impact.
kinda fair, but HLTV did say the IGL slot came down to the gap in that role, not raw frags. apEX over xertioN by 10% T-side round win rate is a weirdly specific tiebreaker, and that is probably enough for them to justify it. still, ropz missing the all-star five after that playoff run does feel off.
nah ropz should’ve been in
yeah, that’s my point
donk got robbed
those new player-radar metrics sound like they finally try to judge role and not just pretty numbers. do you think it actually changes who gets the EVP nod, or is it still just the same names with new labels?
honestly it still looks like old HLTV with extra buttons. they can rename the columns all they want, but the same big names are still winning because they still farm the same maps against the same weak sides. the radar stuff might be nicer for role players, but if the bracket is easy like Spirit’s was here, you will always get arguments about context more than the metric itself.
but that is exactly why the updated radar matters, no? if the bracket is easy, then a plain kill count would be even worse. at least this way they can point to map wins, top 10 splits and round swing instead of pretending a 1.20 rating means same thing in every path. not perfect, but better than awards being pure vibes
sure, but the problem is that the shiny context still ends up attached to the same teams with the most camera time. i am not saying the metrics are useless, just that they do not remove the old bias toward finalists and star names. if anything, they give the debate better numbers to argue over, which is not the same as fixing it
fair, the bias part is still there. but better numbers to argue with is already an upgrade from pure eye test nonsense
does the glossary make it easier to read these awards or just more numbers to stare at? i am trying to tell if Rating 3.0 and Eco Swing will help or if it is still mainly for stat nerds
for me it helps if they keep the glossary close by. the names like Round Swing and Rank in Team are at least easier to understand than trying to guess why a guy with lower kills got picked over someone else. i would rather have more context than another flat rating fight