CS2 skins4 min read

StatTrak and Souvenir skins in CS2: what makes them different

How StatTrak counters work and drop, the StatTrak Swap Tool, Souvenir packages and the Souvenir-O-Matic, and why one skin can't be both.

Fact-checked 18 October 2026 · 8 sources

StatTrak and Souvenir are two labels that can appear in front of a CS2 skin's name. Both are item qualities, variants of the same finish: a StatTrak skin counts what you do with it, while a Souvenir skin commemorates a match at a Major. They come from different places, and no skin is both.

How a StatTrak counter works

Valve's item text sums it up: the item "tracks certain statistics when equipped by its owner". On a weapon that statistic is confirmed kills. On a music kit it's MVPs in official competitive matches. Guns carry the count on a small orange display attached to the weapon, and knives have it inscribed on the blade.

Three details catch people out:

  • Only the owner's kills count. A teammate who picks up your StatTrak rifle adds nothing to it.
  • Kills on bots don't count.
  • The counter resets to zero when the item is traded or listed on the Steam Community Market, as the item's own description warns.

In Valve's item data, StatTrak is the "strange" quality, with the colour #CF6A32, and StatTrak items are outlined in orange on the Steam Community Market and in Steam inventories.

How StatTrak items drop

StatTrak skins come from two places: cases and trade-ups. Perfect World's 2017 odds notice for China says any case item that has a StatTrak version comes out StatTrak one time in ten. Combined with the grade odds, that puts a StatTrak Covert at 0.064% of openings and a StatTrak knife at 0.0256%, about once in 3,910. The full table is in CS2 case odds.

Not everything has a StatTrak version. Skins from map and themed collections don't, and neither do gloves: in Valve's item file, the eight collections whose special items are gloves have no StatTrak pool at all.

Trade-ups are the other route, and have been since StatTrak skins were allowed into contracts in March 2015. A StatTrak contract takes only StatTrak inputs and gives a StatTrak result, and since 22 October 2025 five StatTrak Coverts can become a StatTrak knife, though never gloves. CS2 trade-up contracts covers the rules. Music kits are also sold in StatTrak versions, which count MVPs instead of kills.

The StatTrak Swap Tool

Valve describes the tool in one line: it "swaps StatTrak values between two of the same item type". Pick two StatTrak items of the same kind, two AK-47 skins for example, and their counts trade places. It's how players move a long count onto a different skin of the same weapon. Each tool works once.

Since 12 November 2025, newly bought Swap Tools, like newly bought Name Tags, can't be traded or listed on the Community Market, so a tool has to be used on the account that bought it.

Souvenir packages and their stickers

Souvenir skins come from Major tournaments. Valve's game files list Souvenir packages going back to DreamHack 2013, and each package is tied to a match at a Major. Apart from the first two events' packages, opening one gives a skin from the collection of the map the match was played on, already carrying stickers for the event and the two teams, usually in gold. From 2015 to 2019 the packages also added a gold autograph of the player who was MVP of the round, and the Majors of 2021 and 2022 a gold sticker of the map.

For years packages dropped at random to viewers of Major matches. Since the 2019 Berlin Major they've come through Souvenir tokens instead, and in recent Majors through the Viewer Pass, including as Pick'Em Challenge rewards. In Valve's item data Souvenir is the "tournament" quality, and Souvenir items are outlined in yellow.

Packages have published odds too. Perfect World's table for a package that holds all six grades from Consumer to Covert gives Consumer 79.872% and Covert 0.027%, about once in 3,756 packages.

The Souvenir-O-Matic

For the IEM Cologne 2026 Major, Valve added a different route. With the Souvenir-O-Matic you take a weapon of normal or Souvenir quality from your inventory, pick a completed match and one of its players, and the weapon is permanently converted into a Souvenir with gold team, autograph and map stickers. Any stickers it already had are removed. Valve says the price depends on demand for the stickers involved and on the rarity of the weapon, and you see a preview before you pay. The same Major Shop sold team and autograph stickers directly for tokens, at prices that move with demand, instead of in capsules.

Souvenirs can now also leave that status. Since a May 2026 update, Souvenir skins can go into trade-up contracts alongside normal skins. Before you sign, the game tells you how many Souvenir items you've selected and that all their Souvenir attributes will be removed; the result is a normal item.

Why a skin can't be both

StatTrak and Souvenir are separate qualities in Valve's item data, and none of the routes to one of them produces the other:

  • Souvenir packages hold skins from map collections, which have no StatTrak versions.
  • StatTrak trade-ups accept only StatTrak inputs, while Souvenirs go into the normal contract and lose their Souvenir attributes there.
  • The Souvenir-O-Matic accepts only normal or Souvenir weapons, so a StatTrak weapon can't be converted.

So a skin is StatTrak, Souvenir or neither. Qualities can combine in other ways, though: a StatTrak knife is both a ★ item and StatTrak. Grades, floats and patterns, which apply to all of these, are covered in CS2 skin rarities and float values.

Sources

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