FURIA’s Women’s CS2 Team Is Moving to VALORANT. The Bigger Story Is Why

FURIA is moving its entire women’s Counter-Strike roster to VALORANT after six years in CS. The five players are staying together, but the decision raises a much bigger question about where women’s Counter-Strike goes from here.

FURIA did not lose one Counter-Strike player to VALORANT.

It is moving the entire team.

The Brazilian organization announced on August 17 that its women’s CS2 roster of Karina “kaahSENSEI” Takahashi, Izabella “izaa” Galle, Gabriela “gabs” Freindorfer, Bruna “bizinha” Marvila and Lucia “lulitenz” Dubra will leave Counter-Strike and continue together in VALORANT.

It is an unusual move. Players switching between Counter-Strike and VALORANT is nothing new, but taking an established five-player lineup and effectively moving the entire project from one tactical FPS to another is a much bigger statement.

FURIA’s announcement was simple: new game, same team.

The organization said the roster had “come, seen and won” in Counter-Strike before confirming that FURIA CS Fe is now FURIA VAL Inclusivo.

And that is where this stops being just another roster announcement.

FURIA is leaving after six years in women’s Counter-Strike

This was not a short-lived CS project that failed to get results.

FURIA had competed in the women’s Counter-Strike scene for around six years and became one of South America’s most recognizable teams. The lineup reached three ESL Impact Finals as runners-up before finally winning ESL Impact League Season 7 in May 2025.

That final was hardly straightforward.

FURIA lost its own map pick, Ancient, 13-9 against Supernova Comets before recovering with a 13-7 win on Dust2 and 13-8 on Inferno to take the series 2-1. Bizinha and kaahSENSEI produced some of the decisive rounds that completed the comeback.

Watch: FURIA fe at ESL Impact Season 7

That tournament represented the high point of FURIA’s Counter-Strike project.

A little more than a year later, the same core is leaving the game entirely.

The reason why matters.

Women’s Counter-Strike lost its biggest circuit

The turning point came in late 2025.

ESL Impact, the most established international competition dedicated to women’s Counter-Strike, was placed on indefinite hold following Season 8. ESL said that despite significant investment, its economic model was not sustainable.

That left a major hole in the calendar.

ESL Impact had given women’s teams a regular structure: regional competition, international finals, prize money and a clear tournament to build a season around. Other women’s CS events still exist, but losing Impact removed the circuit that had been closest to a consistent global championship structure. HLTV described the scene afterward as facing an uncertain future.

The effect is becoming increasingly visible in 2026.

FURIA is not the first major name to look elsewhere.

Earlier this month, Mayline-Joy “ASTRA” Champliaud, HLTV’s Women’s Player of the Year for 2025, also announced that she was switching from CS2 to VALORANT. Her explanation was unusually direct: she pointed to women’s Counter-Strike deteriorating and a lack of upcoming tournaments.

Now an entire championship-winning roster is following the same path.

That makes this feel less like an isolated transfer and more like a trend.

Why VALORANT?

For a professional player looking for another tactical FPS, VALORANT is the obvious alternative mechanically.

But the competitive ecosystem is arguably the more important part.

Riot still operates VALORANT Game Changers, with regional competition across several territories and an international championship pathway. Game Changers events remain active across regions in 2026, including Brazil, North America, EMEA and LATAM.

For FURIA, the plan is to move its inclusive roster into VALORANT competition, with Brazilian coverage reporting that the team is targeting the 2027 Game Changers season because the current 2026 regional cycle is already near its final stages.

The lineup remains:

kaahSENSEI • izaa • gabs • bizinha • lulitenz

Four Brazilian players and Argentina’s lulitenz, moving together rather than rebuilding around established VALORANT players.

That creates another interesting question: how quickly can five experienced Counter-Strike professionals become a competitive VALORANT team?

The fundamentals transfer. Aim, communication, trading, positioning and years of LAN experience do not disappear when the game changes.

Agents, utility combinations, ultimates, map-specific setups and VALORANT’s constantly changing meta are another story.

Gabs acknowledged that challenge after the announcement, describing the move as difficult because they will be entering a scene with established teams and players.

Keeping all five players together may help. Instead of building communication from zero, FURIA already has a team that knows how to compete together under pressure.

The tactical language now needs translating.

The VALORANT community immediately noticed

The announcement quickly reached r/ValorantCompetitive, where the bigger discussion was not really about whether FURIA could click heads in a different game.

It was about why another women’s CS team felt the need to leave in the first place.

One response was brutally short:

“yeah, because female cs scene is almost dead”

Another user pointed directly at the loss of third-party tournament support, arguing that women’s CS had been heavily reliant on tournament organizers to maintain a functioning competitive calendar.

There was some classic VALORANT subreddit humor too:

“What beating G2 does to a team.”

That comment was a joke about FURIA’s main VALORANT roster beating G2 shortly before the announcement, but it quickly became one of the thread’s early reactions.

Community discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/ValorantCompetitive/comments/1vqxsqx/furia_fe_transition_to_valorant/

The reaction from Counter-Strike personalities has also been mixed between excitement for the players and disappointment for the scene they are leaving behind.

Two-time Major winner coldzera reacted to FURIA’s announcement by saying it was a shame to lose the players from Counter-Strike while supporting their next step.

That is probably the tension around this move in one sentence.

It may be good for FURIA’s players.

It is difficult to see it as good news for women’s Counter-Strike.

This is bigger than losing one good team

One organization switching games does not mean women’s Counter-Strike is disappearing.

There are still players competing, independent tournaments continue to appear, and other organizations remain involved. HLTV noted after the end of ESL Impact that competitions such as the Female Pro League, ELITE FE and other third-party events were still providing matches.

But losing FURIA matters because of who is leaving.

This is a roster that spent years in the scene.

It reached multiple international finals.

It finally won ESL Impact.

And rather than splitting up, changing organizations or waiting for another CS tournament, all five players have collectively decided that their next competitive opportunity is in another game.

FURIA’s women’s roster has been one of the most recognizable teams from South America. Image: GIRLGAMER

ASTRA’s move makes the timing even harder to ignore.

The best women’s CS player of 2025 moves to VALORANT.

Then one of the scene’s longest-running organizations moves its entire five-player team to VALORANT days later.

At some point, individual transfers begin looking like something structural.

Counter-Strike and VALORANT are competing for more than players

There has always been movement between these two games.

When VALORANT launched, a long list of Counter-Strike players moved across because Riot’s new esport offered another professional path. Over time, that flow became less dramatic as both scenes matured.

Women’s esports may now be creating a different version of the same competition.

The question is not simply which game is better.

It is which game gives a talented player a realistic schedule of tournaments to train for.

For FURIA, VALORANT currently provides a clear destination through Game Changers. Counter-Strike’s women’s scene is still searching for a replacement for the structure ESL Impact provided.

That difference matters when esports is your job.

Players can love a game and still need somewhere to compete.

Now comes the difficult part

Moving from CS2 to VALORANT does not automatically make FURIA a Game Changers contender.

The roster is effectively starting again in a new esport.

They need agent pools. They need new utility protocols. They need to understand VALORANT’s economy, map rotations and ability interactions at a professional level. They will eventually have to play teams that have spent years developing inside Riot’s game.

But FURIA is not starting with five inexperienced competitors.

It is starting with five players who already know how to practice as a professional team, play international events, recover from losses and win a major final together.

That makes the project genuinely interesting to follow.

The bigger concern sits on the other side of the transfer.

FURIA spent six years trying to win at the highest level available to women in Counter-Strike.

They finally did it.

Now, rather than defending that position, the whole team is changing games.

For VALORANT, that is an exciting new roster.

For women’s Counter-Strike, it is another warning.

And if more of the scene’s best players reach the same conclusion over the next year, the biggest question will no longer be whether FURIA can succeed in VALORANT.

It will be who is left to rebuild women’s Counter-Strike after them.