Valve updated Premier's map selection process on September 22, 2026. Previously, teams banned maps until there was only one remaining, which allowed you to permanently avoid a map you didn't like if you were playing with a 3+ stack who could vote as a coalition.
Now, one team picks 1 map, the other team picks 2, and the original team picks 1 more. Between the four maps that have been picked, one is selected at random for the match to be played on.
This change means that as a solo-queuer, you're much less likely to run into Mirage or Dust II than you were before. However, if you were in a stack who perma-banned these maps, now there's a chance you have to play them.
This new system also means that you might have to play the same map 2+ matches in a row, whereas before you could ban a map if you had just played it (assuming you could convince your teammates to vote with you). Now, if you play Inferno and the enemy team picks Inferno in the next match, there's a 1 in 4 chance that it'll get played again by the luck of the draw.
Matches seen on Leetify show that nearly a fifth of matches played on Mirage and Dust II disappeared overnight when this change was made. Cache, by far the lest popular map before, doubled in play-rate. Data is from 12.7 million matches seen from July to October 2026.