How CS2 Cases Work: Keys, Drops and Official Odds

A CS2 weapon case is a container that gives you one random item from a fixed list: weapon finishes from a single collection, plus a small chance at a knife or a pair of gloves. You get cases from weekly drops, the Armory or other players, and you open each one with its matching key. Under the official published odds, 79.923% of openings give a Mil-Spec skin and 0.256%, about 1 in 391, give a knife or gloves.

What’s inside a weapon case

Every case is tied to one collection of weapon finishes spread over four rarities, plus a set of rare special items shown in the case as ★ Rare Special Item. The Kilowatt Case, released in February 2024, is a typical layout: 17 community-made finishes (seven Mil-Spec, five Restricted, three Classified and two Covert) with the Kukri Knife as its rare special item. Some cases hold gloves instead of knives. The Revolution Case, for example, uses the gloves from the Clutch Case.

Within a rarity, every item in the case is equally likely. If an item can come in StatTrak, there is a one-in-ten chance that it does, but gloves never come in StatTrak. Case pages in the wiki’s cases section list the full contents.

How to get cases

• Weekly Care Package. Players with Prime Status get a Care Package the first time they earn an XP rank each week, then pick two rewards from the options on offer. These can include weapon cases, weapon finishes and graffiti. The Care Package replaced the old weekly drops when CS2 launched on September 27, 2023, and rewards you don’t claim are lost once you earn the next one. Accounts without Prime Status don’t receive drops.
• The Armory. An Armory Pass earns Armory Credits as you gain XP, and you redeem the credits for Armory items. The Gallery Case (October 2024) and Fever Case (March 2025) were released this way.
• Steam Community Market and trades. Cases can be bought from, sold to and traded with other players, including older cases that no longer drop.

Keys and the rules around them

Every weapon case needs a key, including cases from a Care Package. Most keys fit a single case, such as the Glove Case Key for the Glove Case. A few older keys cover several: the CS:GO Case Key opens the three CS:GO Weapon Cases and the Operation Bravo Case, and the eSports Key opens the three eSports cases.

Keys are bought from Valve in the game. Since October 28, 2019, a key bought in-game can’t leave the account that bought it: it can’t be traded or sold on the Steam Community Market. Valve made the change because fraud networks had started using keys to cash out. Keys bought before that date can still be traded, so every key you can buy from other players, like those in the wiki’s keys section, is for a case released before the change.

Using a key doesn’t have to mean taking one item. You can instead rent every weapon in the case, except the rare special items, for a week. The option arrived with the Kilowatt Case in May 2024 and was extended to older cases that November.

Local rules change how opening works in a few countries. Since March 2026, players in Germany and the Netherlands can only open containers through the X-Ray Scanner, which reveals the item inside first, though keyless containers such as Souvenir Packages are exempt. France has had a similar X-Ray Scanner rule since 2019.

Official case odds per rarity

The odds were published in 2017 by Perfect World, Valve’s partner in China, on the official Chinese CS:GO site, and the disclosure is still kept up to date. The same odds apply to every case opened with a key:

The numbers come from three stated rules: each rarity is five times less likely than the one below it, a rare special item is two-fifths as likely as a Covert skin, and items of the same rarity share their tier’s chance equally. The one-in-ten StatTrak chance comes from the same disclosure.

Souvenir packages and sticker capsules

Souvenir packages are tied to Majors. Each one holds a single Souvenir skin from the collection of the map a match was played on, and recent packages add gold stickers of the teams that played it. The Paris 2023 Mirage Souvenir Package, for instance, draws from The 2021 Mirage Collection. Souvenir packages open without a key. At recent Majors up to Budapest 2025, Viewer Pass holders earned Souvenir Tokens by upgrading their coin in the Pick’Em Challenge, or bought them, and redeemed each token for a package from the match of their choice. For IEM Cologne 2026, souvenirs worked differently: the Souvenir-O-Matic turned a weapon you already owned into a Souvenir with gold team, autograph and map stickers.

Packages have their own odds, depending on which rarities the map collection includes. For a collection that spans all six weapon rarities, Covert comes up only 0.027% of the time.

Sticker capsules hold stickers graded High Grade, Remarkable, Exotic and Extraordinary. For a capsule with all four grades, the official odds are 80.128%, 16.026%, 3.205% and 0.641%. Almost every capsule opens without a key. The exceptions are Sticker Capsule and Sticker Capsule 2, which need the CS:GO Capsule Key, and Community Sticker Capsule 1, which needs the Community Sticker Capsule 1 Key. For IEM Cologne 2026, Valve sold team and player stickers directly instead of in capsules, but other capsules still come out, such as the Jackass Sticker Capsule in July 2026. The capsules section lists them all.

How case-opening sites like CSDROP differ

Case-opening sites don’t open Valve’s containers. They sell their own cases, with contents and odds that each site sets itself. On CSDROP, every case page lists the skins inside and their drop rates before you open it; you can browse them under all cases. Every roll is provably fair: the result comes from a server seed shown to you as a hash beforehand, your own client seed and a counter called a nonce, so you can check any past result. Skins you win go to your site balance and can be withdrawn to Steam. Because Valve doesn’t set these odds, the official figures above don’t apply to them. Every opening, in the game or on a site, is random, so only spend what you are prepared to lose.

FAQ

What are the odds of getting a knife from a CS2 case?

0.256%, or about 1 in 391 openings, for a rare special item. Depending on the case, that is a knife or a pair of gloves.

Do all containers need a key?

Weapon cases do. Souvenir packages open without one, and so does almost every sticker capsule.

Can you trade or sell case keys?

Only keys bought before October 28, 2019. A key bought in-game after that date stays on the account that bought it.

How do you get free cases in CS2?

With Prime Status, earn your first XP rank of the week to unlock a Care Package, then take a case as one of your two rewards if one is offered. You still need a key to open it.