Astralis Name NEO First Foreign Head Coach in Org History After ruggah Exit

Filip “NEO” Kubski is the new head coach of Astralis, taking over a Counter-Strike team that has struggled for form since April and becoming the first non-Danish coach in the organisation’s history. The appointment follows last month’s dismissal of Casper “ruggah” Due, and pairs the Polish veteran with a new performance coach in Urszula “Xirreth” Klimczak.

Building the next chapter of Astralis.
Together with @neo_fkubski 💥

2014 Major champion. Proven head coach with 3 Major finals under his belt.
We couldn’t be more excited to see what comes next! pic.twitter.com/mzQOVb1WUR

— Astralis Counter-Strike (@AstralisCS) July 16, 2026

NEO has been out of work since March, when FaZe let him go after a nearly three-year association.

What NEO Brings

The 39-year-old won four notable trophies with FaZe, including IEM Sydney 2023 and IEM Chengdu 2024, and guided the team to Major finals in Copenhagen, Shanghai and Budapest. His exit came after FaZe failed to qualify for IEM Cologne.

He inherits a side in poor shape. Astralis have struggled since a runner-up finish at PGL Bucharest in April, and ended the season by going out of IEM Cologne Stage 2 with a 1-3 record, losing to 9z, TYLOO and paiN. “Astralis has been on top of the Counter-Strike game for a long time, and the brand is still legendary,” NEO said in a statement. “Going international hasn’t made the task in front of this group easy, and that’s exactly what makes it interesting, especially after the promising results they’ve already shown.”

The Foreign-Coach Milestone

NEO’s hiring marks the first time Astralis has put a non-Danish coach at the helm, though it is consistent with where the org has been heading. After releasing ruggah, Astralis reiterated a willingness to hire outside Denmark, and the roster already fields Swedish AWPer Love “phzy” Smidebrant and Lithuanian Gytis “ryu” Glusauskas. CEO Jonas Gundersen was a proponent of international rosters during his time as COO at NIP, too, when that team moved away from an all-Swedish lineup.

Xirreth and the Culture Play

NEO said another reason he took the job was the chance to work alongside Xirreth, who joins as performance coach. She spent nearly three years with Natus Vincere, working with both the organisation’s Counter-Strike and VALORANT rosters, and was part of NAVI’s setup during their Copenhagen Major title run. Before that she worked with CLG and ENCE.

Gundersen framed both hires as a long game rather than a quick fix. “To me, this is an investment in the future,” the Astralis CEO said. “It comes down to a core philosophy: Winning in the long run requires a deeply rooted culture that runs through the entire organization. With these two bringing both the past and the present of what it takes to build that culture, I believe we can, over time, build one of the healthiest and most stable performance cultures out there. That’s exactly what we aspire to be, an organization built for the future, one that trusts the process over immediate results.”

The first look at the new setup comes later this month, when Astralis play Stage 1 of BLAST Bounty Season 2, where 32 teams contest eight spots at the LAN finals.