Ahead of IEM Cologne Major 2026, a very clear trend is already emerging in map vetoes: Anubis has become the main candidate for the status of the tournament’s least desired map. According to the available statistics, it is the first ban for every fourth team among the Major participants. And against this backdrop, one logical conclusion is being voiced more and more loudly: if Cache really does enter the active map pool, then Anubis looks like the most realistic candidate to be removed.
IEM Cologne Major 2026
These numbers matter not only as dry pre-tournament statistics. They show very well which maps teams genuinely do not want to keep in their pool and which ones they are willing to leave in even in difficult series. A permaban is always one of the most honest indicators: if a map keeps getting banned before the series even begins, then the issue is not a one-off matchup, but a systemic unwillingness from teams to work with it.
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Anubis is the undisputed leader in permabans
The main conclusion from this chart is simple: Anubis gets banned the most often. It is the permanent first ban for MOUZ, Legacy, The MongolZ, B8, Astralis, 9z, HEROIC, SINNERS, and a number of other lower-seeded teams.
So this is not about one or two teams that simply “do not like” the map. On the contrary, Anubis is regularly removed in the ban phase by representatives from different regions and different competitive levels. This already looks like a broad signal across the scene: the map has not become universally comfortable for most of the field.
That is exactly why Cache is increasingly being linked to replacing Anubis
When the community talks about the possible return of Cache, the next logical question immediately appears: which map would it replace? And here, the ban statistics themselves already tell a lot.
If a map is the most frequent permaban among Major participants, that means a large part of the scene already does not want to play it. In that case, Anubis looks like the most vulnerable position in the current map pool. Not because the map is necessarily bad, but because it is the least integrated into the real tournament comfort zone of the teams.
Even the favorites have very clear ban priorities
Interestingly, the picture among the top teams is also quite telling. Vitality, FURIA, and Aurora permaban Ancient. NAVI, Falcons, Monte, and FlyQuest remove Overpass. Spirit, FUT, and BetBoom take out Inferno. G2, PARIVISION, M80, and BIG remove Nuke. Meanwhile, MOUZ, Legacy, and several other teams are sitting specifically on Anubis.
That once again shows the difference between an “unpopular map” and “a map banned in a specific matchup.” In the case of Anubis, what we see is mass rejection rather than a local quirk of a few lineups.
Not all maps are equally problematic for the field
Against the backdrop of Anubis, there are maps that clearly do not provoke the same level of widespread rejection. For example, Mirage appears as a permaban much less often, Dust2 is also not removed by everyone, while Ancient, Inferno, Nuke, and Overpass are more closely tied to the styles of specific teams.
And this is where Anubis loses. When a map is banned by too broad a pool of participants, it starts to look not just debatable, but redundant for a significant part of the scene. For Valve, that is a very visible signal if they really intend to revisit the map pool after the Major.
Ban statistics are almost a death sentence for a map
A permaban is one of the harshest diagnoses a map can get. If a team constantly removes a map first, it means they do not see any point in even trying to adapt it to themselves. And when the number of such teams becomes large, the map gradually loses its status as a full-fledged element of the competitive pool.
That is why the current situation around Anubis looks so telling. On paper, it is still part of the big scene, but in practice, for a noticeable part of the field, it is already a map that is easier to throw away than to prepare.
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The most obvious candidate
Ahead of IEM Cologne Major 2026, Anubis looks like the main victim of map vetoes: it is permabanned by approximately every fourth team. And if you look at this not emotionally, but purely through tournament logic, then right now it is the most obvious candidate to be replaced if Cache makes a full return.
In other words, the statistics have almost already answered the question for everyone: the map that Cache could push out of the pool appears to have already been found.
