CS2 Season 5 overhauls bomb damage, adds Cache, and brings new Armory collections

Counter-Strike 2 Season 5 is live, and it's headlined by a complete rework of how the C4 bomb deals damage — plus Cache returning to the Active Duty map pool in place of Overpass.

The biggest gameplay change is the bomb explosion system. Instead of damage being applied instantly across a radius, a shockwave now expands outward from the bombsite through the map. Close to the bomb? You're dead regardless. But at range, the shockwave dissipates around corners and won't pass through walls, meaning smart positioning can save your gear for the next round. Valve has pre-calculated the shockwave values for every official defusal map, so the outcome is consistent and predictable. To help players gauge their odds, the health bar will flash a preview of incoming damage while the bomb is counting down. The patch notes also confirm a bug fix where picking up dropped weapons through the Buy Menu would sometimes fail to complete.

The Armory gets a refresh too. Two new community-created weapon collections — Arabesque and Spy Tech — are now available, alongside two new sticker collections: Fruits & Vegetables and Auto Racing. These came out of Valve's recent Call to Arms community submission drive. On the flip side, the Train 2025 and Sport & Field weapon collections have been pulled, as have the Sugarface 2 and Elemental Craft sticker collections. Five community maps join the rotation: Boulder, Fachwerk, and Shelter land in Competitive, Casual, and Deathmatch, while Debris and El Dorado are added to Wingman. Warden, Stronghold, Alpine, and Sanctum have been removed. A follow-up patch updated all four new community maps to their latest Workshop versions and applied stability and security fixes.

Valve is already running the next Call to Arms submission round, this time looking for community-made content for a Fairy Tales weapon collection and two sticker collections — Cryptids and Pop Art. CS2 YouTuber Gabe Follower has also flagged an experimental console command spotted in the update that lets players detonate grenades by shooting them, though Valve hasn't confirmed any plans to roll that out publicly.